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SOCIALISM 

IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 


SOCIALISM  IN 
CHURCH  HISTORY 


BY 


CONRAD    NOEL 


The  question  which  ought  to  hold  a  pre-eminent  place  in 
the  interests  of  Churchmen  is,  how  we  are  to  return  to  a 
condition  of  things  nearer  to  the  intention  of  Christ— if  it 
may  be.  without  violence  or  revolution :  but  if  not,  then 
anyhow  to  return."— Dr.  GORE,  Bishop  of  Birmingham, 
Barrow-in-Furness  Church  Congress  Sermon,  1906 


THE    YOUNG    CHURCHMAN    CO., 

MILWAUKEE,   WIS. 
I9II 


TO 
MY    WIFE 


215023 


THE  ARGUMENT 

MANY  members  of  the  Church  of  England  are 
socialists,  and  would  establish  a  commonwealth  whose 
people  should  own  the  land  and -the  industrial  capital 
and  administer  them  co-operatively  for  the  good  of 
all.  Such  public  ownership  they  regard  as  urgent, 
and  as  a  necessary  deduction  from  the  teachings  of 
the  Church.  They  are  not  communists  but  socialists. 
Far  from  seeking  the  abolition  of  private  property  or 
the  curtailment  of  personal  freedom,  they  desire  such 
an  industrial  rearrangement  of  society  as  shall  not 
only  increase  the  national  output  but  shall  secure  to 
the  majority  the  wealth  they  produce  and  the  liberty 
they  have  hitherto  been  denied. 

The  Christian  Faith  cannot  be  summed  up  in  the 
word  socialism,  nor  should  it  be  finally  identified 
with  any  political  or  economic  system.  For  all  this, 
Churchmen  are  convinced  that  the  principles  which 
underlie  socialism  are,  so  far  as  they  go,  the  principles 
of  the  Christian  religion  as  applied  to  political, 
commercial,  and  industrial  problems. 

Orthodox  Church  folk  recognise  the  statement  that 
the  Church  should  have  nothing  to  do  with  politics 
or  with  material  life  as  a  deadly  and  soul-destroying 


8          SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

heresy,  contradicting  the  Christian  doctrines  of  icrea- 
tion,5ncarnation,  and  of  the<Jesurrection  of  the  body. 

The  kingdom  of  heaven,  a  kingdom  not  "of" 
this  world,  but  "  in  "  this  world,  is  thrust  like  leaven 
into  the  ages,  until  every  avenue  of  human  activity 
is  leavened.  The  Church,  established  by  God,  as 
the  mouthpiece  of  the  kingdom,  must  seize  every 
opportunity  of  interfering  with  the  world,  until  it  has 
transformed  its  evil,  warring,  factious  kingdoms  into 
the  international  commonwealth  of  God  and  of  His 
Christ. 

To  this  end  it  must  neither  neglect  nor  confine 
itself  to  the  political  sphere.  It  must  be  as  ready  to 
make  temporary  alliances  with  political  parties  as  it 
is  determined  to  entangle  itself  inextricably  with  no 
political  party  soever. 

The  object  of  the  present  work  is  to  justify  the 
foregoing  position  by  an  appeal  to  Christian  history, 
and  to  suggest  that  economic  socialism  provides  the 
practical  and  scientific  form  for  our  own  day  and  in 
one  important  human  sphere  for  the  realisation  of 
those  very  objects  which  the  Church  has  always  had 
at  heart. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  identify  Jewish  legislation, 
primitive  Christian  practice,  Church  law,  with  the 
proposals  of  economic  socialism,  but  rather  to  point 
•out  that  the  eternal  purposes  of  Holy  Church,  ex- 
pressed from  age  to  age  in  various  more  or  less 
ineffectual  efforts,  must  now  be  expressed  in  the 
eminently  effectual  system  of  socialism. 

Socialism  is  no  fixed  and  final  scheme  of  perfec- 
tion, but  we  claim  it  as  the  solution  for  our  day  of  a 


THE  ARGUMENT  9 

multitude  of  evils.  In  the  centuries  to  come  socialism 
will  give  place  to  some  other  system  more  applicable 
to  the  needs  of  a  now  undreamt-of  future. 

Churchmen  sometimes  argue  that,  although  eco- 
nomic socialism  does  not  necessarily  involve  "  ration- 
alist" positions,  so  many  of  its  supporters  are 
unorthodox  that  they  consider  it  dangerous  to 
identify  themselves  with  the  movement.  But  it  is 
precisely  because  the  Church  of  to-day  has  so  largely 
failed  us,  that  the  construction  of  a  socialist  philo- 
sophy has  fallen  into  the  hands  of  persons  alienated 
from  the  traditions  of  Christendom.  All  the  more 
necessary  is  it  for  that  handful  of  Churchmen  who 
value  not  the  dead  letter  but  the  living  spirit  of 
tradition  to  come  forward  and  make  their  own 
intellectual  contribution  to  the  building  of  the 
international  commonwealth. 

Previous  writers  have  dealt  with  parts  of  the 
subject.  Amongst  the  authors  to  whom  I  am  chiefly 
indebted  are  Messrs  Ashley,  Rauschenbusch,  A.  J. 
Carlyle,  R.  W.  Carlyle,  Stewart  D.  Headlam,  Thomas 
Hancock,  and  Charles  Marson.  So  far  as  I  know,  no 
existing  work  covers  the  whole  ground,  and  I  am 
conscious  how  imperfectly  what  is  a  very  large 
subject  is  dealt  with  here.  My  hope  in  writing  will 
be  realised  if  someone  more  competent  than  myself 
should  be  tempted  to  deal  with  the  subject  at  greater 
length,  and  if  meanwhile  the  present  work  directs 
attention  to  a  vital  aspect  of  Church  thought  too 
often  neglected. 

CONRAD  NOEL. 
Advent,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

1.  SOCIALISM IS 

2.  THE  JEWISH   SCRIPTURES     .  .  .  -33 

3.  THE  GOSPELS         ....  -57 

4.  THE   EARLY   CHURCH   ...  •        91 

5.  THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST   PAUL       .  .  .      1 1/ 

6.  THE  SACRAMENTS          ...  .14! 

7.  THE  HOLY   ROMAN    EMPIRE  .  .  .163 

8.  THE   REFORMATION 195 

9.  THE   NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM    .           .           .      233 
IO.   BEFORE  THE  DAWN 253 


I 

SOCIALISM 

Socialism  defined — Its  underlying  assumptions — Analysis  of  private 
industrialism — The  nature  of  capital — No  absolute  ownership  in 
fact — The  great  pillage  and  enclosures — The  capitalist  landlord — 
Extravagant  claims  of  landlords — Rent  and  interest  analysed — The 
nature  of  modern  interest — Brains  and  Hands — But  interest  at 
present  necessary — How  will  it  be  abolished  ? — The  practicability 
of  socialism — Its  root  in  history. 


I 

SOCIALISM 

"We  see  that  it  is  not  any  form  of  ability,  either  in  design  or  in 
organisation  (which  is  but  design)  or  in  manual  effort,  which  secures 
the  largest  rewards  in  industry.  It  is  capital,  as  capital,  which  takes 
the  lion's  share  of  the  product  of  the  mental  and  manual  labour  exer- 
cised upon  the  small  area  of  land  which  serves  for  the  basis  of  our 
industries.  The  landlord's  share,  although  great,  is  relatively  small." — 
L.  G.  CHIOZZA  MONEY,  M.P.1 

"  Socialism  is  the  principle  according  to  which  the  community  shall 
own  the  land  and  industrial  capital  collectively  and  use  them  co- 
operatively for  the  good  of  all." — Church  Socialist  League. 

SOCIALISTS  of  every  varying  shade  of  opinion  accept 
the  above  definition  of  socialism.  Jevonian  socialists, 
Marxian  socialists,  Church  socialists,  anti-Church 
socialists,  free-trade  socialists,  fair-trade  socialists, 
feminist  socialists,  anti-feminist  socialists,  free-will 
socialists,  determinist  socialists,  puritan  socialists, 
anti-puritan  socialists,  in  a  word  all  socialists,  how- 
ever much  they  may  differ  on  other  points,  are  in 
absolute  agreement  on  one  point,  and  that  point 
is  their  socialism.  They  are  socialists,  not  because 

1  Riches  and  Poverty ,  chap.  viii. ,  ' '  Those  who  Work  and  those  who 
Wait,"  p.  97  (is.  net ;  Methuen).  Mr  Money's  book  should  be  used  as 
companion  volume  with  my  own.  Mr  J.  A.  Hobson's  The  Industrial 
Revolution :  An  Inquiry  into  Earned  and  Unearned  Income  (73.  6d.  net ; 
Longmans,  1909)  should  also  be  carefully  studied. 

'5 


1 6        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

they  are  Theosophists  or  Jews,  temperance  men  or 
teetotalers,  pro-peace  or  pro-war,  but  solely  because 
they  accept  the  principle  according  to  which  the  land 
and  industrial  capital  should  be  publicly  owned  and 
publicly  administered  :  wise  or  otherwise,  just  or  un- 
just, practicable  or  impracticable,  socialism  is  one 
and  simple,  and  a  man  of  ordinary  intelligence  could 
grasp  its  main  proposition  in  ten  minutes.  There  are 
many  kinds  of  human  beings,  and  therefore  many  kinds 
of  socialists,  but  there  is  only  one  kind  of  socialism. 

These  economic  proposals  for  the  transference  of 
land  and  industrial  capital  from  private  to  public 
hands  are  the  expression  of  a  certain  conviction 
about  life.  This  conviction  has  been  thus  described 
by  Bishop  Westcott  of  Durham,  who,  contrasting 
socialism  with  individualism,  writes  : — 

It  is  by  contrast  with  individualism  that  the  true 
character  of  socialism  can  best  be  discerned.  Individualism 
and  socialism  correspond  with  opposite  views  of  humanity. 
Individualism  regards  humanity  as  made  up  of  disconnected 
or  warring  atoms ;  socialism  regards  it  as  an  organic  whole, 
a  vital  unity  formed  by  the  combination  of  contributory 
members  mutually  interdependent.  It  follows  that  socialism 
differs  from  individualism  both  in  method  and  in  aim.  The 
method  of  socialism  is  co-operation ;  the  method  of  indi- 
vidualism is  competition.  The  one  regards  man  as  working 
with  man  for  a  common  end ;  the  other  regards  man  as 
working  against  man  for  private  gain. 

People  of  all  classes  are  beginning  to  realise  that 
much  poverty  is  preventible.  The  socialist  movement 
is,  and  will  always  be,  largely  artisan,  but  it  draws 
from  all  classes.  The  more  thoughtful  and  generous 
rich  are  beginning  to  regard  it  as  intolerable  that 
they  should,  through  rents  and  interest,  be  living  idly 


SOCIALISM  17 

upon  the  bounty  of  the  poor.  They  are  beginning  to 
understand  that  the  overwork  and  underfeeding  of 
the  worker  are  the  direct  consequence  of  the  under- 
work and  overfeeding  of  the  gentleman.  They  are 
beginning  to  ask — Cannot  this  system  be  slowly  or 
swiftly  transmuted  into  some  juster,  more  orderly, 
more  efficient,  and  more  human  type  of  civilisation  ? 

Present-day  industrialism  is  rooted  in  the  monopoly 
of  land  and  capital,  as  essential  both  of  them  to 
human  life  as  air,  sunshine,  or  water.  The  monopolist, 
rich  by  possession  of  these  essentials,  exacts  a  yearly 
tribute  from  the  masses  in  the  shape  of  rent  upon 
land,  paid  out  of  wages  and  salaries,  and  rent  upon 
capital,  stopped  out  of  wages  and  salaries.  For  if,  as 
is  universally  agreed,  all  (economic)  wealth  is  the 
result  of  mental  and  manual  labour  productively 
employed  upon  land,  and  the  majority  of  the 
monopolists  labour  neither  with  their  minds  nor 
with  their  hands,  whence  comes  their  income  ?  Not, 
assuredly,  down  like  manna  from  on  high,  but  up 
from  those  classes  who,  landless  and  capitalless,  have 
only  hands  and  brains  to  sell,  and  are  forced  to  sell 
them  to  the  possessors  on  terms  involving  the  over- 
work and  underfeeding  of  the  many  (their  underpay 
and  overwork  being  further  secured  by  the  existence 
of  a  convenient  margin  of  the  unemployed  poor, 
hungry  to  beat  down  the  wages  of  the  overemployed) 
and  the  underwork  and  overfeeding  of  the  few, 
supported  from  the  privations  of  the  producers. 
Wealth  does  not  come  down  from  heaven,  but  up 
from  those  man-made  hells  to  which  we  condemn  our 
slave  population. 

2 


1 8        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

We  only  smile  when  the  barrel-organs  of  plutocracy 
grind  out  the  maxim  that  capital  must  have  its  share, 
for  capital  is  inert  machinery,  railroads,  factories,  and 
power  over  labour,  every  scrap  of  it  being  itself  the 
product  of  past  labour.  How  can  a  railway  have  its 
fair  share  ?  We  cannot  do  without  capital ;  we  are 
rapidly  learning  to  do  without  the  private  capitalist. 

Inanimate  things  have  no  rights,  and  the  rights  of 
the  private  holders  of  certain  inanimate  essentials  are 
the  very  points  in  dispute.  Most  people  now  admit 
that  land,  created  by  none  and  necessary  to  all, 
should  be  the  common  property  of  all.  In  the  past 
it  has  been  divided  up,  and  the  dividers  have  thriven 
on  the  spoil.  Socialism  is  a  scheme  by  which  the 
dividing  up  of  the  people's  land  should  finally  cease. 

But  railways,  mines,  post-offices,  factories,  high- 
roads, canals,  and  other  forces  of  industrial  capital 
created  by  no  single  man  but  by  the  whole  closely 
woven  industrial  community  should  also  be  the 
property  of  all. 

For  if  in  any  community  whatsoever  there  be 
permitted  the  monopoly  by  private  individuals  of 
sea,  land,  air,  industries,  sunlight,  rivers,  or  mines 
there  will  in  that  community  be  land  lords,  sea  lords, 
air  lords,  and  share  lords  enforcing  tribute  for  the 
use  of  these  essentials,  and  living  unproductively 
upon  the  fruits  of  this  compulsion. 

Landlordism  and  capitalism  in  their  present  form 
are  but  a  thing  of  yesterday.  The  theory  of 
absolute  individual  ownership  developed  rapidly  with 
the  rapid  growth  of  Christo-capitalism.  With  the 
decadence  of  this  particular  form  of  religion  we  are 


SOCIALISM  19 

witnessing  the  decadence  of  the  accompanying  eco- 
nomic heresy. 

The  upholders  of  the  absolute  ownership  theory 
appeal  in  vain  to  pre- Reformation  times,  for  even 
feudalism  allowed  what  was  but  a  strictly  limited 
right  of  private  ownership,  absolute  ownership  be- 
longing only  to  the  Crown,  and  the  Crown,  at  least 
in  theory,  representing  the  whole  nation.  Even 
throughout  the  dark  ages  of  the  eighteenth  and  nine- 
teenth centuries,  the  nation's  right,  though  obscured, 
was  in  law  acknowledged,  for  landlords  were  compelled 
to  sell  at  the  national  bidding ;  while  under  feudalism 
lands  were  granted  conditionally  on  public  services 
annually  rendered.  If  the  landlord  were  forgetful  of 
the  conditions,  the  land  could  be  promptly  confiscated. 
Until  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  the  power  to 
bequeath  land  was  largely  restricted. 

If  the  nation  had  the  right  to  confiscate  without 
compensation  the  millions  of  acres  of  monastic  estates, 
belonging  for  the  most  part  to  worthy  resident  land- 
lords, and  give  the  third  part  of  the  kingdom  of 
England  to  landlords,  often  unworthy  and  non- 
resident ;  by  what  conceivable  theory  of  justice  can 
the  inheritors  of  this  wholesale  confiscation  deny  the 
right  of  the  nation  to  resume  its  ownership  with 
compensation  ? 

Certain  great  families  reigned  supreme  before  the 
days  of  the  franchise,  and  used  their  public  office 
for  private  ends  in  such  a  manner  as  would  have 
brought  them  to  the  gallows  in  healthier  times.  From 
the  socially  disastrous  period  of  the  Reformation 
onwards,  encroachment  after  encroachment  was  made 


20        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

upon  the  people's  land,  until  we  come  to  the  period 
of  1 20  years  from  1760  to  1880,  when  a  further  ten 
million  acres  were  annexed,  often  without  compensa- 
tion. But  the  defenders  of  these  old  loot-bills  of  the 
landlords  use  the  following  arguments:  (i)  The  land, 
in  some  cases,  has  changed  hands  by  purchase ; 
therefore  the  restoration  of  the  land  would  be  unfair. 
But  (a)  some  people  formerly  invested  their  honest 
earnings  in  the  legal  purchase  of  slaves.  Did  this 
warrant  the  indefinite  postponement  of  slave-libera- 
tion ?  Why  then  should  we  indefinitely  postpone 
land  liberation?  (b)  This  argument  would  seem 
tacitly  to  assume  the  nation's  right  to  resume  owner- 
ship of  all  lands  not  so  purchased.  (2)  Land  is 
nowadays  practically  worthless.  Rents  barely  cover 
the  upkeep  of  estates.  The  landlord  often  gives 
more  than  he  takes. 

We  fully  realise  the  inefficiencies  of  private  enter- 
prise, and  grant  that  in  some  cases  this  argument 
holds  good ;  but  if  any  landlord  chooses  to  plead  as 
above,  we  warn  him  that  he  is  playing  into  the  hands 
of  those  who  would  confiscate  his  land  without  a 
farthing  of  compensation.  As  a  fact,  all  honourable 
claimants  will  be  duly  compensated. 

In  reality  this  type  of  landlord  is  not  landlord  by 
profession  but  an  amateur.  He  is  a  capitalist  who 
acquires  a  country  estate  as  a  hobby,  indulged  in 
by  means  of  the  proceeds  derived  from  the  serious 
business  of  his  life — banking,  the  factory,  the  mine, 
the  railway.  There  are  still  thousands  of  squires 
living  solely  from  rent.  And  if  we  consider  the 
problem  of  the  town,  we  find  that  a  certain  family 


SOCIALISM  21 

bought  the  site  of  a  northern  town  for  a  song,  and 
squeezes  from  the  people  of  that  town  a  yearly  rental 
of  a  hundred  thousand.  Nor  do  we  forget  that  the 
soil  of  London,  worth  an  annual  hundred  thousand 
agriculturally,  now  yields  to  the  landlords  an  annual 
twenty  million. 

Now,  I  will  assume  that  you  condemn  the  private 
ownership  of  land.  You  have  come  to  the  conclusion 
that,  as  land  is  necessary  to  all,  to  deprive  men  of 
land  is  to  deprive  them  of  life.  To  deprive  men  of 
land  except  on  the  landlord's  terms,  is  to  deprive 
them  of  life  except  on  the  landlord's  terms.  But 
there  are  many  who  will  condemn  private  ownership 
of  land,  air,1  sea,  and  sunshine,  who  will  defend 
private  ownership  of  factories,  railways,  and  the  like. 
They  condemn  rent,  while  they  defend  interest  or 
usury.  What  harm  is  there  in  A,  the  saver  of  a  sum 
of  money,  obliging  B  with  the  loan  of  it,  in  return  for 
a  small  annual  interest  in  respect  of  risks  run  ? 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  questionable  if  A  has  really 
justly  saved  the  money.  Money  represents  and  is  the 
symbol  of  society's  debt  to  the  individual  for  service 
rendered.  Now  the  vast  majority  of  present-day  sums 
invested  represent  no  such  debt.  Is  society  really 
and  justly  in  the  debt  of  A,  the  saver?  Does  his 
"  pile "  represent  what  society  owes  him  for  his 
services?  Has  he  inherited  his  money?  If  so,  the 
original  debt  (where  there  was  one)  has  often  been 

1  Landlords  are  claiming  ownership  of  the  air  above  as  well  as  of  the 
mineral  wealth  below  the  surface  of  their  estates.  A  landlord  can  sue 
the  owner  of  an  aeroplane  for  trespass.  Rights  in  the  sea  are  claimed 
by  the  Duke  of  Northumberland  and  other  landlords  with  coast-bound 
estates,  who  seek  to  impose  a  tax  on  fishermen  on  every  catch  they 
make  within  so  many  hundred  yards  of  the  shore. 


22        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

repaid    over  and  over  again.     Is  he  a    "self-made" 
man  ?     If  so,  he  is  either  (a)  a  speculator,  or  trans- 
ferrer  of  other   people's   money  to   his   own   pocket, 
or    (b)    a    mere    exploiter   of  productive    labourers, 
or    (c)   part    genuine   mental    or    manual    producer 
and    part  exploiter.     In  the  first   two   cases  society 
owes   him  nothing  but  a  prison.      In  the  third  case 
his   "  savings "  only  in  part   represent  a  real   claim 
upon   society,  for    he    has    almost   invariably    been 
grossly  overpaid  for  the  part  he  has  played  in  pro- 
duction.     There  remain   an  infinitesimal  number  of 
cases  where  a  man's  savings  may  represent  an  honest 
claim  upon  the  wealth  of  the  world  for  work  rendered. 
Let  us  then  ask,  in  the  case  of  these  few  exceptions, 
which  do  not  account  for  one-hundredth  of  the  investing 
public,  Have  they  a  right  to  do  what  they  like  with 
their  money  ?     Suppose  our  friend  A  belongs  to  this 
class :  has  he  a  right  to  invest  it  where  he  has  a  mind  ? 
Every  sane  person  admits  he  has  no  such  absolute 
right  of  investment.     Everybody  admits  he  has  no 
right  to  invest   his  "  savings  "   in  buying   babies  for 
purposes  of  vivisection.     No  one  will  allow  him  the 
right  of  investment  in  the  Angola  slave  trade.     Not 
even  in  law  is  any  such  absolute  right  admitted.     If 
investment   in  certain  lands  or   in  certain  industries 
can  be   proved   to   be   equivalent   to   investment   in 
slaves,  or  to  be  obviously  disastrous  to  the  community, 
the  public  conscience  will  inevitably  come  to  regard 
such   investment   as   immoral.      We   have   admitted 
that,  in  strict  justice,  A  should  not   be   allowed  to 
invest  in  land.     There  is  no  immediate   moral  con- 
demnation upon  land  investors  to-day,  but  the  public 


SOCIALISM  23 

conscience  which  legalises  such  investments  is  coming 
to  be  acknowledged  as  unhealthy  and  immoral.  We 
have  come  to  this  conclusion  because  we  discovered 
that  if  A,  instead  of  consuming  his  claim  upon  society, 
is  permitted  to  exchange  that  claim  for  a  plot  of  land 
to  be  possessed,  not  for  purposes  of  work,  but  for 
extraction  of  rent,  he  has  actually  been  permitted  to 
exchange  his  claim  for  shares  in  the  white  slave 
market,  and  his  family  will  thereby  be  enabled  to  live 
idly,  not  for  a  few  years  by  consumption  of  his  claim, 
and  afterwards  go  back  to  work,  but  in  all  perpetuity 
by  laying  a  perpetual  and  compulsory  private  tax 
(rent)  upon  the  annual  product  of  the  workers.  If  all 
the  workers  were  in  one  way  or  another  possessors  of 
land  or  capital,  they  would  only  make  use  of  this 
land  and  pay  rent  for  it  by  choice  and  not  by  com- 
pulsion. Land  is  limited  in  extent  and  essential  to 
all.  Therefore  landless  folk  are  not  free  to  bargain. 

Well,  then,  if  A  may  not  invest  in  land,  may  he 
not  invest  in  capital  ?  may  he  exchange  his  "  savings," 
or  "  claim  on  society,"  for  capital,  i.e.  shares  in  a 
mine,  factory,  or  railroad  ?  May  not  A  forego  his 
just  claim  and  lend  it  to  B  to  start  or  carry  on 
a  business ;  B  to  pay  A  an  annuity  in  respect  of 
risks  run  ? 

But  this  case  of  A  and  B  as  equal  bargainers  does 
not  exist  in  fact.  If  A  and  B  had  started  life  equally 
equipped,  and  A  were  the  virtuous  saver  and  B  the 
profligate  spender,  i.e.  if  B  were,  solely  through  his 
own  fault,  without  money  that  could  be  converted 
into  capital,  the  non-Christian  man  of  the  world 
might  say :  Why  should  not  A,  the  virtuous,  take 


24        SOCIALISM  IN   CHURCH  HISTORY 

advantage  of  B,  the  formerly  vicious  ?  Why  should 
not  the  elder  brother  start  the  converted  prodigal  in 
business,  and  charge  him  considerable  and  perpetual 
interest  on  the  loan?  The  Christian  religion,  of 
course,  emphatically  negatives  this  transaction ;  but 
the  man  of  the  world  would  certainly  consider  it  just. 

But  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  A  and  B  are  not 
by  any  means  equal  bargainers  ;  for  A,  the  individual^ 
lends  to  B,  the  group  exploiter.  B  does  not  set  to 
work  alone  and  unaided,  purchasing  plant  and 
supporting  himself  by  means  of  A's  loan,  and  paying 
him  a  small  return  plus  the  original  sum  out  of 
profits.  B  promises  usury x  or  interest  to  the  absentee 
shareholder,  because  B  represents  a  group  of  workers, 
landless  and  capitalless,  and  therefore  not  free  to 
bargain.2  He  knows  that  these  workers  will  be 
forced  to  assent  to  his  terms  or  starve,  and  that  from 
the  profits  of  their  joint  labour  is  to  come  that  interest 
on  shares,  or  compulsory  annuity,  on  which  our 
widows  and  orphans — all  shareholders  are  supposed 
by  critics  of  socialism  to  come  under  one  or  other  of 
these  definitions — thrive  so  satisfactorily. 

The  attack  of  the  socialist  is  not  upon  brain  versus 
hand  work  ;  it  is  not  aimed  at  the  productive  mental 
labourers.  All  such  workers  would,  under  a  socialist 
reconstruction  of  industry,  be  adequately  rewarded 
for  work  rendered.  Nor  does  the  socialist  attack  all 
forms  of  inheritance  or  of  private  property.  It  is 
indeed  because  he  believes  in  the  rights  of  private 

1  Usury   until   very  lately    meant  interest   in   any   shape   or   form. 
This  is  its  meaning  in  the  English  translation  of  the  Bible. 

2  Cf.  Report  of  Bishops,  etc. ,  forming  a  Committee  of  Convocation  of 
Canterbury  on  Economic  Questions  (2d.  ;  S.P.C.K.). 


SOCIALISM  25 

property  that  he  is  a  socialist,  for  he  finds  these  rights 
are  violated  by  capitalism.  He  desires  solely  to 
build  up  a  system  under  which  those  forms  of 
property  which  are  essentially  common  to  all  because 
necessary  to  all  shall  in  point  of  fact  be  owned  by  all. 
He  desires  this,  in  order  that  those  forms  of  property 
which  are  essentially  private  and  peculiar  should  be 
secured  to  the  mental  and  manual  labouring  members 
of  the  community,  i.e.  to  all  members  of  the  re- 
organised community,  for  by  socialism  we  establish 
a  commonwealth  in  which  all  able-bodied  and  able- 
brained  persons  are  workers ;  the  children,  the  aged, 
and  the  sick  alone  being  entitled  to  support  without 
rendering  productive  service  in  return. 

Now,  although  many  people  have  come  to  believe 
usury-bearing  investments  in  land  and  industries  to 
be  in  the  long  run  immoral  and  unjustifiable,  it  is 
obvious  that  these  investments  perform  an  indispens- 
able function  in  the  immoral  and  unjustifiable  anarchy 
we  are  pleased  to  call  the  society  of  the  present.  It 
would  be  as  difficult  as  it  would  be  futile  to  condemn 
the  individual  landlord  or  capitalist  under  existing 
conditions.  If  one  were  to  ask  him  to  abandon  his 
land  or  his  shares,  he  would  point  to  his  wife  and 
children,  and  remark  that  after  all  one  must  live.  Do 
we  want  him  to  join  the  ranks  of  the  millions  com- 
peting fiercely  one  against  another  for  work  ? 

In  spite,  therefore,  of  the  ultimate  unwisdom  and 
injustice  of  such  investments,  they  will  not  cease 
until  for  the  present  industrial  anarchy  is  substituted 
such  an  ordered  society  as  shall  (a)  make  it  possible 
for  one-time  investors,  if  able-bodied  and  able-brained, 


26        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

to  become  productive  labourers,  in  the  general  interest, 
or,  if  disabled,  to  find  some  source  of  support  other 
than  investments  ;  and  (U)  create  such  collective  wealth 
as  shall  supplant  private  capital  or  the  necessity  of 
financial  appeal  to  private  capitalists.  It  is  such  a 
social  readjustment  that  socialism  proposes. 

Reference  has  been  made  to  collective  wealth 
supplanting  private  capital.  The  following  instances 
are  to  the  point.  The  city  of  Leeds  manages  its 
tramways.  Under  private  enterprise  the  mileage  of 
lines  was  twenty-two.  Under  the  first  few  years  of 
public  enterprise  the  mileage  has  increased  to  one 
hundred.  Fares  are  lower,  wages  higher,  hours 
shorter.  The  service  is  comfortable  and  efficient. 
Municipalities  can  borrow  at  cheaper  rates  than 
private  individuals.  The  interest  on  borrowed  capital 
is  therefore  low.  Far  from  coming  on  the  rates,  an 
annual  £62,000  is  paid  out  of  profits  in  relief  of  rates. 
Due  amount  is  allowed  for  depreciation,  and  a  sinking 
fund  is  established  for  the  paying  up  of  capital  in- 
vested. In  twenty  years'  time  the  whole  of  the 
capital  subscribed  will  be  paid  off,  and  the  tramway 
system  will  belong  to  the  city,  with  no  claims  on  the 
part  of  shareholders  to  be  met. 

Prussia  manages  its  railways.  They  were  acquired 
by  issuing  Government  bonds  in  lieu  of  the  former 
share  certificates.  Although  a  low  and  uniform  rate 
of  freightage  has  been  adopted,  which  has  given  an 
intense  impetus  to  industry,  such  immense  profits  are 
made  that  the  railways  alone  contribute  annually 
millions  of  pounds  towards  the  extinction  of  the 
national  debt.  Capital  is  being  paid  off  annually  as 


SOCIALISM  27 

well  as  interest  duly  met.  In  fifty  years  the  railway 
system  will  belong  to  the  nation  absolutely.  No 
more  interest  will  need  to  be  paid.  Borrowed  capital 
will  have  been  entirely  repaid. 

Is  it  not  evident,  therefore,  that  with  every 
extension  of  the  field  of  public  enterprise,  and  with 
every  increase  in  the  public  capital,  there  will  be  a 
narrowing  of  the  field  for  private  investors  ?  In  a  few 
years  they  can  no  longer  invest  in  Prussian  railways, 
or  municipal  stock.  As  the  area  of  public  enterprise 
widens,  the  area  of  private  enterprise  must  shrink. 
People  who  formerly  held  stock  in  municipal  and 
national  undertakings  have  not  only  been  paid  their 
interest  but  have  been  paid  back  their  capital  out 
of  social  profits.  They  have  only  to  reinvest  ?  But 
every  day,  with  the  increase  of  public  effort  and  the 
upbuilding  of  a  public  wealth,  it  is  less  and  less 
necessary  to  rely  upon  the  private  investor.  Mean- 
while nationalities  and  municipalities  will  be 
reorganising  labour,  shortening  hours,  increasing 
wages,  offering  more  and  more  berths  to  competent 
men  and  women.  The  private  investor  will  give  his 
sons  and  daughters  a  business  education.  The 
second  generation,  or  at  least  the  third,  will  no 
longer  be  able  to  rely  on  usury  or  rent  for  a  living. 
They  will  begin  to  be  educated  in  order  that  they 
may  learn  and  labour  truly  to  get  their  own  living  in 
that  divine  commonwealth  to  which  it  shall  please 
God  to  call  them. 

If  Prussia  is  successful  in  organising  transit,  why 
should  she  not  organise  agriculture?  If  Leeds  can 
manage  its  tramcars,  why  not  its  mills?  If  New 


28        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Zealand  can  run  a  sawmill,  why  not  Manchester  a 
cotton-factory  ? 

Granted,  then,  that  socialism  is  just,  there  seems 
evidence  in  favour  of  its  practicability.  Anti- 
socialists  point  in  vain  to  Athens,  Sparta,  Rome,  to 
Peru  and  other  countries,  for  evidence  against  the 
system  they  hate ;  for  in  none  of  these  places  did  the 
people  own  the  land  and  the  industrial  capital,  and  in 
none  of  them,  therefore,  was  socialism  even  attempted. 

Neither  would  the  success  or  failure  of  groups  of 
communist  cranks  existing  in  the  midst  of  the  hostile 
environment  of  the  present  industrialism  prove  any- 
thing either  for  or  against  the  practicability  of  the 
socialist  proposal. 

There  are  not  wanting  indications,  however,  that 
socialism  would  prove  an  efficient  solution  of  our 
present  difficulties.  The  Spencerian  theory  that  a 
multitude  of  small  competitors  are  more  efficient  than 
companies,  trusts,  municipalities,  or  nations  working 
by  means  of  salaried  managers  has  been  shattered  by 
a  fusillade  of  facts.  Collective  production  is  driving 
competition  out  of  the  field.  Not  only  does  the 
growth  of  the  Trust  illustrate  the  point,  but  the 
success  of  public  trading  still  further  emphasises  it. 
Every  effort  is  being  made  in  the  plutocratic  press, 
and  in  the  writings  of  such  authors  as  Mr  St  Loe 
Strachey  and  Lord  Avebury,  to  minimise  the 
significance  of  these  successes ;  but  those  who  will 
pursue  the  subject  will  find  their  contentions  contra- 
dicted by  the  official  year-books  of  our  colonies,  the 
Board  of  Trade  returns,  and  by  recent  books  on 
Prussian  and  Belgian  railway  management.  Mr  St 


SOCIALISM  29 

Loe  Strachey  and  Lord  Avebury  are  answered  very 
completely  in  (i)  The  Economics  of  Direct  Employ- 
ment ;  (2)  Municipal  Trading ••  (3)  Machinery  (all  three 
penny  pamphlets  of  the  Fabian  Society,  3  Clement's 
Inn,  Strand,  W.C.) ;  (4)  Emil  Davies,  Railway 
Nationalisation,  price  one  shilling ;  (5)  The  Common 
Sense  of  Municipal  Trading^  by  G.  Bernard  Shaw, 
price  sixpence ;  (6)  Mind  Your  Own  Business,  by 
R.  B.  Suthers  (on  municipal  capital),  price  sixpence  ; 
(7)  Behind  German  Dreadnoughts  (on  German  public 
experiments),  price  one  penny  (these  two  latter  pub- 
lished by  the  Clarion  Press,  44  Worship  Street,  E.C.).1 
Behind  the  economic  proposals  of  socialism,  the 
anti-private  rent  and  interest  programme  and  the  col- 
lectivist  theory  of  industry,  there  lies  a  fundamental 
conception  of  society.  The  philosophy  of  socialism 
is  fellowship,  justice  among  men,  the  value  of  the 
whole  of  life,  material,  mental,  spiritual.  In  the  fol- 
lowing pages  we  shall  compare  the  Christian  with  the 
socialist  conception  of  life,  noting  the  singular  likeness 
between  the  two,  and  trace  the  various  attempts  to 
put  these  fundamental  conceptions  into  practice.  Our 
inquiry  leads  to  the  conviction  that  this  modern 
experiment  of  socialism  and  those  older  experiments 
have  the  same  root.  Their  ojigin  may  be  found  in 
that  fundamental  attitude  towards  life  which  is  both 
Catholic  and  Socialist. 

1  Readers  would  do  well  to  make  themselves  familiar  with  Mr  George 
Bernard  Shaw's  reply  to  Mr  W.  H.  Mallock's  argument  concerning 
ability.  It  will  be  found  in  Socialism  and  Brains  (Fabian  Society, 
3  Clement's  Inn,  Strand,  W.C.  id.). 


II 

THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES 

Religion  and  socialism  —  The  universal  Spirit  —  The  roots  of  our 
tradition  —  Jewish  and  socialist  philosophy  in  some  respects 
identical — Jewish  origins — Moses  as  revolutionary — The  conquest 
of  Canaan— The  Judges— The  demand  for  a  king— Solomon  as 
Oriental  despot— The  rebellion— No  divorce  between  spiritual, 
mental,  and  material  —  The  test  of  spiritual  reality  —  Modern 
critical  theories  irrelevant  to  our  subject — The  Book  of  the 
Covenant  —  Naboth's  vineyard  —  The  reigns  of  Uzziah  and 
Jeroboam  II.  compared  with  the  early  Victorian  era— The 
prophet-politicians— The  national  poetry— Josiah  the  reformer — 
God's  jealousy  and  its  economic  implications  —  More  social 
legislation — Social  message  of  Nehemiah  and  Ezekiel— Condemna- 
tion of  interest — Ezra  and  reform — The  last  layer  of  the  Law — 
Land  legislation — The  Old  Testament  attitude  summed  up  in  the 
earlier  chapters  of  Isaiah. 


II 

THE  JEWISH    SCRIPTURES 

"  Confine  religion  to  the  personal,  it  grows  rancid,  morbid.  Wed  it 
to  patriotism,  it  lives  in  the  open  air,  and  its  blood  is  pure." — GEORGE 
ADAM  SMITH,  Expositor's  Bible  :  Book  of  the  Twelve  Prophets^  vol.  i. 
p.  25,  1886. 

WHAT  has  the  Christian  religion  to  do  with 
socialism?  We,  whose  spiritual  ancestors  claimed 
Plato  as  a  Christian,  worship  the  God  from  whom 
all  good  things  do  come,  who  giveth  to  all  life  and 
breath  and  all  good  things,  and  hath  made  of  one 
every  nation  of  men  to  dwell  on  all  the  face  of  the 
earth,  having  determined  their  appointed  seasons 
and  the  bounds  of  their  habitation  ;  that  they  should 
seek  God,  if  haply  they  might  feel  after  Him  and 
find  Him,  though  He  is  not  far  from  each  one  of  us, 
for  in  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being. 
Our  theologians  have  incorporated  Greek  and  Arabian 
philosophy  into  the  structure  of  the  Christian  faith. 
Our  thought  and  ceremonial  are  to  some  extent 
assimilated  from  non-Christian  sources.  Our  religion, 
stifled  and  deflected  in  Palestine,  expanded  and 
flourished  in  the  wide  room  of  the  Graeco-Roman 
world.  Of  all  this  we  boast,  for  we  have  not 

33  3 


34       SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

borrowed  from  alien  sources,  but  from  the  Holy 
Spirit  whose  reign  is  universal  and  whose  inspira- 
tion world-wide.  But  although  trees  are  nourished 
not  only  from  the  root,  but  from  their  hundred 
thousand  leaves,  the  root  is  after  all  of  vast  import- 
ance, and  the  root  of  the  Christian  faith  is  to  be 
found  in  the  Jewish  religion.  By  a  true  instinct  the 
Christians  adopted  and  adapted  the  Jewish  scrip- 
tures to  their  requirements,  when  they  had  no 
accredited  scripture  of  their  own.  Our  literature 
and  our  traditions  are  saturated  with  Hebraic  con- 
ceptions. To  the  Old  Testament  we  must  go,  if  we 
are  to  understand  the  New  ;  to  the  national  Kingdom 
and  Church  of  God  as  understood  by  the  Jew,  if  we 
would  understand  the  international  Kingdom  and 
Church  of  God  as  proclaimed  by  the  Christians. 

What,  then,  has  the  Jewish  religion  to  say  to  that 
economic  socialism  whose  philosophy  is  fellowship, 
justice  between  man  and  man,  the  value  of  the  whole 
life,  material  as  well  as  spiritual,  and  whose  pro- 
gramme is  the  common  ownership  of  the  means  of 
national  life?  What,  if  anything,  can  the  Jewish 
religion  tell  us  about  private  rent  and  interest,  which 
we  believe  are  the  destruction  of  fellowship,  an  out- 
rage on  justice,  and  a  hindrance  to  the  life  of  man, 
body,  mind,  and  spirit  ?  When  we  turn  to  the  Jewish 
sacred  literature,  we  are  struck  with  its  variety — 
songs,  myths,  history,  parables,  legal  codes,  and 
drama:  yet  these  varying  notes  are  grouped  more 
or  less  into  chords,  and  even  the  discords  are  finally 
resolved  into  harmony ;  for  through  all  the  wide 
range  of  their  literature  there  runs  the  binding  con- 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  35 

ception  of  God  and  His  kingdom  here  on  earth,  the 
sense  of  fellowship  and  of  justice,  the  sense  also  of 
the  value  of  the  whole  life,  material  as  well  as 
spiritual.  As  Israel  grows  towards  unity,  these 
fundamental  conceptions  of  ancient  Hebrew  and 
modern  socialist  translate  themselves  into  a  social 
and  political  system  whose  laws  against  rent  and 
interest  are  examples  of  their  strenuous  attempt  to 
set  up  a  commonwealth  founded  in  Divine  justice 
between  man  and  man. 

The  Hebrews,  a  Semitic  people,  originally  dwelt 
in  the  Arabian  highlands,  a  country  of  bracing 
climate,  rich  soil,  and  abundant  corn  crops,  coffee, 
vineyards,  vegetable  gardens,  and  orchards. 

As  the  population  increased,  the  Hebrews,  more 
adventurous  than  their  kinsmen  the  Syrians,  Edomites, 
and  Moabites,  wandered  forth  with  their  flocks  and 
herds,  semi-communistic  groups  of  alert  and  hardy 
people;  and  after  many  vicissitudes  we  find  them 
settled  in  Egypt  under  the  Hyksos  dynasty,  at  first 
in  favour  with  the  kings,  but  afterwards  sorely 
oppressed.  Scourged  and  bullied  by  their  masters, 
their  cry  came  up  to  God  by  reason  of  their  bonds. 
In  the  very  palace  of  the  Pharaohs  the  Hebrew 
Moses  was  being  trained  in  all  the  learning  of  Egypt. 
The  cry  of  his  people  might  easily  have  been  stifled 
by  the  allurements  of  the  court,  but  the  brilliance 
of  a  political  future  counted  as  nothing  with  him 
when  the  Spirit  of  God  had  fired  him  with  indignation 
against  the  bondage  of  his  people.  The  difficulties 
were  stupendous — all  the  force  of  Egypt  and  the 
suspicions  of  his  own  kinsmen.  Cursed  by  those 


36        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

whom  he  would  have  delivered,  the  immediate  result 
of  interference  was  a  more  terrible  bondage.  It  was 
as  difficult  to  put  heart  into  these  spiritless  creatures 
numbed  by  oppression,  as  it  is  for  the  revolutionaries 
of  our  day  to  fire  the  slums  with  the  spirit  of  revolt. 
"  They  hearkened  not  unto  Moses  for  anguish  of 
spirit  and  for  cruel  bondage."  He  drew  back  dis- 
couraged, but  again  was  driven  forward  by  the  energy 
of  God  until  the  work  was  accomplished  and  his 
people  had  escaped  into  the  deserts  beyond  the 
Red  Sea. 

Coming  from  a  land  where  the  rights  of  sepulture  were 
regarded  as  all-important,  and  the  preservation  of  the  body 
after  death  was  the  passion  of  life ;  among  a  people  who 
were  even  then  carrying  the  remains  of  their  great  ancestor 
Joseph  to  rest  with  his  fathers,  he  yet  conquered  the  last 
natural  yearning  and  withdrew  from  the  sight  and  sympathy 
of  men  to  die  alone  and  unattended,  lest  the  idolatrous 
feeling,  always  ready  to  break  forth,  should  in  death  accord 
him  the  superstitious  reverence  he  had  refused  in  life.  No 
man  knoweth  of  his  sepulchre  unto  this  day.  But  while 
the  despoiled  tombs  of  the  Pharaohs  mock  the  vanity  that 
reared  them,  the  name  of  the  Hebrew  who,  revolting  from 
their  tyranny,  strove  for  the  elevation  of  his  fellow- men  is 
yet  a  beacon  light  to  the  world.1 

The  day  of  their  deliverance  was  to  be  annually 
observed,  and  when  their  children  should  ask  them 
the  meaning  of  this  festival,  they  should  say :  "  It  is 
the  sacrifice  of  the  Lord's  Passover,  who  passed 
over  the  houses  of  the  children  of  Israel  in  Egypt, 
when  He  smote  the  Egyptians  and  delivered  our 
houses."  God  would  give  them  great  and  goodly 
cities  which  they  builded  not,  and  houses  full  of  all 

1  Moses,  by  Henry  George. 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  37 

good  things  which  they  filled  not,  cisterns  hewn  out 
which  they  had  not  hewn,  vineyards  and  oliveyards 
and  fields  of  plenty,  and  they  should  eat  and  be  full. 
So  there  came  to  them  the  idea  of  conquest  and  the 
lust  for  that  goodly  land  of  brooks  of  water,  of 
fountains  and  depths,  springing  forth  in  valleys  and 
hills;  a  land  of  wheat  and  barley,  of  oil  and  olives 
and  honey,  of  vines  and  pomegranates,  a  land  wherein 
they  should  eat  bread  without  scarceness. 

Moab  said  unto  the  elders  of  Midian,  "  Now  shall 
this  multitude  lick  up  that  is  round  about  us,  as  the  ox 
licketh  up  the  grass  of  the  field."  Baalam,  bribed  to 
foretell  their  downfall,  is  compelled  to  prophesy  their 
success : — 

How  goodly  are  thy  tents,  O  Jacob,  thy  tabernacles, 
O  Israel !  As  valleys  are  they  spread  forth,  as  gardens  by 
the  river  side,  as  aloes  which  the  Lord  hath  planted. 
Water  shall  flow  from  his  buckets,  and  his  seed  shall  be  in 
many  waters,  and  his  king  shall  be  higher  than  Agag,  and 
'his  kingdom  shall  be  exalted.  God  bringeth  him  forth  out 
of  Egypt ;  he  hath  as  it  were  the  strength  of  the  wild-ox ; 
he  shall  eat  up  the  nations,  and  shall  break  their  bones  in 
pieces. 

The  conquest  of  Canaan  was  slow,  and  the  diffi- 
culty great  ;  certain  tribes  were  not  loyal,  preferring 
to  mix  with  the  enemy  and  adopt  their  customs  ; 
many  considered  too  swift  and  complete  a  victory 
would  not  be  wise :  they  must  not  annex  more  land 
than  they  could  till.  To  this  transitional  period 
belong  those  natural  leaders  of  the  people  whom  we 
know  as  the  Judges.  They  arose  in  time  of  need ; 
they  came  from  the  people  and  were  acceptable  to 
them.  These  leaders  were  sometimes  women.  At 


38        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

this  time  there  were  few  social  inequalities  and  no 
abject  poverty ;  these  evils  belonged  to  the  later 
period  of  commerce  and  despotism.  For  the  present, 
the  Jews  were  cut  off  from  the  sea-board  and  the 
great  trade  routes  by  the  presence  of  still  uncon- 
quered  tribes.  The  ruthless  nature  of  their  warfare 
is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  the  Daneite  tribe  who 
descend  upon  Laish,  a  people  inoffensive  and  secure, 
seizing  their  fertile  lands  and  showing  no  quarter. 
The  whole  of  Canaan  had  been  marked  out  among 
the  tribes  for  conquest,  and  on  its  annexation  was 
divided  portion  by  portion  by  each  tribe  according  to 
the  number  of  its  families.  The  basis  of  their  land 
system  would  seem  to  have  been  not  an  absolute 
but  a  relative  peasant-proprietorship,  with  ultimate 
ownership  vested  in  the  tribe. 

It  was  only  very  gradually  that  the  tribes  were 
welded  together  into  a  nation ;  the  people  were 
beginning  to  feel  that  they  could  never  complete 
their  conquest  under  these  spasmodic  leaderships  ; 
they  wanted  a  more  permanent  leader  who  should  be 
their  general  in  war  time  and  their  law-giver  in  times 
of  peace.  Their  demand  is  resisted  by  the  prophet 
Samuel,  who  warns  them  of  the  dangers  of  kingship. 

And  the  Lord  said  unto  Samuel,  Hearken  unto  the  voice 
of  the  people  in  all  that  they  say  unto  thee  :  for  they  have 
not  rejected  thee,  but  they  have  rejected  me,  that  I  should 
not  reign  over  them.  According  to  all  the  works  which 
they  have  done  since  the  day  that  I  brought  them  up  out 
of  Egypt  even  unto  this  day,  wherewith  they  have  forsaken 
me,  and  served  other  gods,  so  do  they  also  unto  thee.  Now 
therefore  hearken  unto  their  voice  :  howbeit  yet  protest 
solemnly  unto  them,  and  shew  them  the  manner  of  the 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  39 

king  that  shall  reign  over  them.  And  Samuel  told  all  the 
words  of  the  Lord  unto  the  people  that  asked  of  him  a 
king.  And  he  said,  This  will  be  the  manner  of  the  king 
that  shall  reign  over  you  :  He  will  take  your  sons,  and 
appoint  them  for  himself,  for  his  chariots,  and  to  be  his 
horsemen ;  and  some  shall  run  before  his  chariots.  And 
he  will  appoint  him  captains  over  thousands,  and  captains 
over  fifties ;  and  will  set  them  to  ear  his  ground,  and 
to  reap  his  harvest,  and  to  make  his  instruments  of  war, 
and  instruments  of  his  chariots.  And  he  will  take  your 
daughters  to  be  confectionaries,  and  to  be  cooks,  and  to  be 
bakers.  And  he  will  take  your  fields,  and  your  vineyards, 
and  your  oliveyards,  even  the  best  of  them,  and  give  them 
to  his  servants.  And  he  will  take  the  tenth  of  your  seed, 
and  of  your  vineyards,  and  give  to  his  officers,  and  to  his 
servants.  And  he  will  take  your  menservants,  and  your 
maidservants,  and  your  goodliest  young  men,  and  your 
asses,  and  put  them  to  his  work.  He  will  take  the  tenth  of 
your  sheep  :  and  ye  shall  be  his  servants.  And  ye  shall 
cry  out  in  that  day  because  of  your  king  which  ye  shall 
have  chosen  you  :  and  the  Lord  will  not  hear  you  in  that 
day.  Nevertheless  the  people  refused  to  obey  the  voice  of 
Samuel :  and  they  said,  Nay  ;  but  we  will  have  a  king  over 
us ;  that  we  also  may  be  like  all  the  nations  ;  and  that  our 
king  may  judge  us,  and  go  out  before  us,  and  fight  our 
battles.  And  Samuel  heard  all  the  words  of  the  people, 
and  he  rehearsed  them  in  the  ears  of  the  Lord.  And  the 
Lord  said  to  Samuel,  Hearken  unto  their  voice,  and  make 
them  a  king.  And  Samuel  said  unto  the  men  of  Israel, 
Go  ye  every  man  unto  his  city. 

We  find  some  reflection  of  this  warning  in  an  early 
written  law,  wherein  the  king  is  forbidden  to  possess 
much  silver  or  gold,  or  to  multiply  to  himself  horses 
or  wives.  And  indeed  their  first  king  remained  a 
simple  farmer  to  the  day  of  his  death.  David  marks 
the  transition  from  simplicity  to  wealth.  This  great 
warrior-politician,  who  did  so  much  towards  the  uni- 
fication of  Israel,  had  begun  his  life  as  a  shepherd 


40        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

But  with  Solomon,  Samuel's  forebodings  are  fully 
justified  and  the  old  law  disregarded.  Solomon  is  a 
good  example  of  the  Oriental  despot.  He  made 
slaves  of  the  conquered  peoples,  and  although  he 
did  not  actually  enslave  his  fellow-countrymen,  he 
gathered  together  chariots  and  horsemen,  made  silver 
to  be  in  Jerusalem  as  stones,  and  cedars  made  he  to 
be  as  the  sycamore  tree  in  the  lowlands  for  abundance  ; 
his  harem  was  immense,  and  the  demands  of  these 
luxurious  foreign  women,  who  had  turned  away  his 
heart  from  the  simple  customs  of  his  ancestors,  must 
have  constituted  a  colossal  drain  upon  the  resources 
of  the  country.  The  fact  that  he  was  able  to  stave 
off  a  popular  revolt  is  a  tribute  to  the  wisdom  of  his 
statesmanship ;  the  entente  that  he  was  able  to  make 
with  Egypt  was  of  great  value  to  Israel,  and  the  poor 
would,  no  doubt,  be  fascinated  by  the  glitter  and 
lavishness  of  the  court  and  the  army,  and,  heavy  as 
was  the  taxation,  would  for  the  time  acquiesce  in  a 
huge  expenditure  made  possible  by  foreign  levies. 

With  the  mention  of  this  despotism  and  its  large 
revenues  comes  a  significant  mention  of  excessive 
poverty,  for  at  the  king's  death  the  people,  led  by 
Jeroboam,  come  to  Solomon's  legitimate  successor  and 
issue  their  ultimatum :  "  Thy  father  made  our  yoke 
grievous  ;  now  therefore  make  the  grievous  service  of 
thy  father,  and  the  heavy  yoke  that  he  put  upon  us, 
lighter,  and  we  will  serve  thee." 

At  first  he  is  inclined  to  yield,  but  ultimately  he 
refuses  the  democratic  counsel  of  the  more  conservative 
advisers  and  replies :  "  As  my  father  did  lade  you 
with  a  heavy  yoke,  I  will  add  to  your  yoke :  my 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  41 

father  chastised  you  with  whips,  but  I  will  chastise 
you  with  scorpions." 

But  he  had  forgotten  the  power  of  the  revolu- 
tionary prophet.  Ahijah  drives  Jeroboam  to  con- 
spiracy; the  revolution  is  ablaze,  and  the  answer 
comes  swiftly :  "  What  portion  have  we  in  David  ? 
what  inheritance  have  we  in  the  son  of  Jesse?  to 
your  tents,  O  Israel."  So  the  orthodox  succession 
loses  ten  out  of  the  twelve  tribes,  and  civil  war  is 
only  averted  through  the  instrumentality  of  another 
prophet. 

The  Hebrews  are  now  practically  in  possession  of 
the  whole  of  Palestine,  but  are  split  up  into  two 
sections  under  rival  kings,  each  accepting  the  same 
law,  and  each  professing  to  be  the  kingdom  of  God 
on  earth. 

It  will  now  be  fairly  evident  that  the  Old  Testa- 
ment conception  of  religion  recognised  no  divorce 
between  things  spiritual  and  things  material.  Hebrew 
spirituality  was  concerned  with  the  bodies,  minds,  and 
spirits  of  men,  and  translated  itself  immediately,  as 
all  healthy  spirituality  at  all  times  must,  into  political 
action.  Their  kingdom  was  not  of  this  world — that 
is,  was  not  to  be  modelled  on  the  worldly  customs 
of  the  surrounding  imperialism;  it  was  to  be  the 
commonwealth  of  God,  founded  in  justice  between 
man  and  man.  The  reign  of  Solomon  had  been  a 
departure  from  the  simple  ideal  of  justice.  The 
earth  is  the  Lord's,  together  with  its  products.  Their 
prophets  and  law-givers  believed  that  the  earth  had 
been  given  for  the  use  of  a  peasant  nation  of  workers, 
and  not  for  the  profit  of  a  rent-extracting  minority. 


42        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Capital,  such  as  there  was,  must  not  enslave  men  by 
means  of  interest ;  the  needs  of  the  poor  must  not  be 
made  the  opportunity  of  the  powerful.  Landlordism 
and  capitalism  are  of  this  world ;  now  is  God's  earthly 
kingdom  not  from  hence.  But  as  these  spiritual  beliefs 
were  real  beliefs,  and  not  modern  Sunday  platitudes, 
they  were  immediately  translated  into  national  action 
in  the  shape  of  laws. 

It  used  to  be  the  custom  to  group  the  Old  Testa- 
ment laws  together  and  claim  for  all  of  them  Mosaic 
authorship.  Modern  critics  challenge  this  claim,  and 
are  inclined  to  regard  the  bulk  of  so-called  Mosaic 
legislation  as  being  the  outcome  of  the  prophetic 
period.  There  is,  however,  no  reason  why  we  should 
doubt  that  Moses  had  some  vision  of  a  theocracy 
founded  on  justice,  in  which  there  should  be  plenty 
and  to  spare  for  all,  of  a  people  uncontaminated 
with  the  customs  of  their  neighbours,  of  a  people 
planted  and  rooted  evenly  and  wisely  in  the  land. 
Moses  would  have  seen  the  evils  of  landlordism, 
capitalism,  and  usury  in  Egypt;  they  would  be 
vividly  contrasted  in  his  mind  with  the  democratic 
and  communistic  traditions  of  his  own  people.  It 
may  well  be  that  the  Jewish  law  is  essentially  Mosaic, 
although  its  actual  committal  to  writing  may  have 
been  but  gradual,  and  legislation  would  develop  along 
the  lines  of  national  experience.  While  not  com- 
mitting oneself  entirely  to  the  theories  of  modern 
critics,  it  will  be  interesting  provisionally  to  accept 
certain  of  their  conclusions  and  to  trace  the  economic 
history  of  Israel  along  the  chronological  lines  that 
they  have  suggested. 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  43 

In  accordance  with  this  plan,  we  must  here  consider 
the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  which  is  supposed  to  em- 
body the  earliest  form  of  the  written  law.  The  code 
shows  us  that  slavery  still  exists  among  the  Jews,  but 
in  a  comparatively  harmless  form.  Every  seventh 
year  the  Jewish  slave  goes  free,  unless  he  prefers 
servitude.  If  a  father  sells  his  daughter  into  slavery, 
he  must  not  sell  her  to  foreigners.  Such  a  slave 
could  even  marry  into  the  family  she  served,  and  must 
in  that  case  be  treated  as  one  of  the  family,  and  could 
claim  food  and  raiment  and  her  marriage  rights  if  her 
husband  took  another  wife.  If  the  claim  was  refused 
she  could  go  home.  Man-stealing  and  taking  interest 
are  punishable  with  death.  If  a  person's  clothing 
was  taken  as  security  for  a  loan,  it  was  to  be  returned 
to  him  the  same  night.  The  existence  of  poor  people 
was  contemplated,,  but  they  were  to  be  relieved  in 
various  ways,  every  seventh  year,  for  instance,  being 
a  fallow  year,  when  fields,  vineyards,  and  oliveyards 
were  to  be  common  to  all. 

An  early  form  of  the  Decalogue  seems  to  have 
been  included  in  this  code.  The  Sabbath  rest  was 
based  on  humanitarian  considerations.  The  people's 
ownership  of  the  land  is  taken  for  granted  in  the 
fifth  commandment;  the  removing  of  one's  neigh- 
bour's land-mark  would  be  the  most  glaring  in- 
stance of  the  breaking  of  the  sixth,  while  the  tenth 
would  secure  the  peasantry  their  ancient  economic 
rights.  Health  and  strength  would  be  the  result  of 
national  obedience  to  these  laws ;  national  disaster 
and  individual  disease  would  be  the  penalty  of 
disobedience. 


44        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

The  story  of  Naboth's  vineyard  is  an  example 
of  the  clash  between  the  lusts  of  an  Orientalised 
despotism  and  the  rights  of  the  Jewish  democracy. 

Ahab  knew  the  tenacity  with  which  the  Israelite  clung 
to  his  freehold,  and  the  sanctity  which  attached  to  the 
ancestral  inheritance,  and  hence,  when  Naboth  refused  to 
sell,  the  king  could  only  fume  helplessly  at  the  failure  of  his 
petty  plans  for  a  private  park.  His  wife  was  from  Tyre, 
where  royal  power  was  older  and  accustomed  to  move 
rough-shod  over  the  fancied  rights  of  the  common  herd. 
She  sneered  at  his  feeble  grip  and  gave  him  a  lesson  in 
handling  the  judiciary.  But  the  judicial  murder  of  Naboth 
brought  Elijah  out  to  face  the  king,  a  grim  incarnation  of 
justice  and  of  the  divine  rights  of  the  people.  Ahab  had 
collided  with  the  primitive  land-system  of  Israel  and  the 
prophetic  sense  of  justice,  and  it  cost  his  dynasty  the 
throne  and  Jezebel  her  life.1 

The  most  significant  period  from  our  point  of  view, 
as  regards  both  the  Northern  and  the  Southern 
Kingdoms,  corresponds  with  the  reigns  of  Uzziah  and 
Jeroboam  II.  It  was  a  period  of  unparalleled  pro- 
sperity ;  wealth  was  increasing  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
It  may  not  unfittingly  be  compared  with  the 
beginnings  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  England, 
for,  in  spite  of  this  prolific  increase,  the  poor  were 
becoming  poorer  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  growth  in  the 
fortunes  of  the  rich.  We  read  of  idle  lives  given  up 
entirely  to  pleasure,  of  inlaid  ivory  houses,  of  town 
and  country  residences,  of  costly  wines  and  scent,  of 
the  ever-growing  claims  of  capitalism  and  landlordism. 
Poverty  increased,  for  the  people  were  no  longer 
masters  of  the  situation.  "  Capital  controlled  the 
food-supply,  and  the  landed  estates  displaced  the 

1  Rauschenbusch,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis. 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  45 

peasantry."  A  sudden  war,  a  famine,  an  illness, 
would  push  the  poor  man  over  the  border-line  into 
slavery.  The  people,  robbed  of  their  lands,  were 
obliged  to  borrow  at  enormous  rates  of  interest  to 
pay  the  taxes,  and  often  sold  their  children  to  slavery 
to  meet  their  obligations.  The  revival  of  husbandry 
was  eclipsed  by  the  growth  of  trade  and  of  the  city. 
For  the  poor  man  there  was  no  redress,  for  the  law  and 
the  official  religion  had  alike  passed  into  the  hands  of 
the  classes.  Up  to  this  period  the  land  has  been 
covered  by  a  sturdy  warrior  peasantry;  now  there 
is  no  place  for  the  poor  man,  and  with  the  growth 
of  civilisation  we  note  the  inevitable  appearance  of 
the  landless  proletariat.  Internally,  there  was  misery 
and  dissension :  externally,  the  empire  of  Assyria 
was  rising  on  the  eastern  horizon  "like  a  cyclone 
cloud."  "  It  moved  down  on  the  cluster  of  little 
kingdoms  in  Syria  and  Palestine  with  irresistible 
force,"  for  it  was  "  destined  to  grind  up  the  tribal 
nationality  of  the  ancient  Orient,  and  to  begin  the 
work  which  Chaldea  and  the  Greeks  continued  and 
the  Romans  completed." 1 

The  dark  ages  of  Israel  called  forth  the  Prophets. 
George  Adam  Smith  has  said  that  no  prophet 
ever  worked  on  the  basis  of  principles  only.  He 
came  always  in  alliance  with  facts.  As  Maurice  and 
Kingsley  are  to  some  extent  the  creation  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  so  Amos,  Hosea,  Micah,  and  Isaiah  are 
created  by  the  needs  of  their  time.  It  is  remarkable 
that  men  who  suffer  from  some  intimate  and  individual 
trouble  will  find  themselves  turning  to  the  pages  of 

1  Rauschenbusch,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis. 


46        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

these  most  spiritual  of  religious  leaders ;  yet  these 
leaders  whose  spirituality  has  endured  were  essentially 
politicians,  and  would  have  stared  in  blank  amazement 
at  the  silly  question,  "Has  religion  anything  to  do  with 
politics  ?  "  They  were  revolutionaries  whose  audacity 
would  have  staggered  Messrs  Hyndman  and  Blatchford. 
There  is  again  illustrated  in  their  lives  the  nature  of 
Jewish  religion,  its  recognition  of  justice  and  the 
needs  of  men's  bodies,  its  denial  that  there  can  be 
any  spirituality  apart  from  fellowship.  The  Spirit  is 
not  given  to  the  separate  believer,  but  to  the  nation. 
The  very  Psalms  are,  for  the  most  part,  national 
songs.  The  "I"  of  the  Psalmist  is  Israel  in  its 
totality.  Modern  critics  suggest  that  even  the  fifty- 
first  Psalm,  so  long  supposed  to  be  a  Davidic  poem 
of  personal  repentance,  is  the  wail  of  the  nation  in 
captivity,  with  the  walls  of  its  city  razed  to  the 
ground.  Where  individuals  are  gathered  together  in 
national  fellowship,  there  is  God  in  the  midst  of  them. 
Hence  the  tent  or  the  temple  becomes  the  trysting- 
place,  the  symbol  of  unity  and  therefore  of  salvation. 
Jerusalem  is  the  Holy  City,  for  it  is  at  unity  in 
itself,  and  thither  the  tribes  go  up  to  worship  the 
national  God. 

Nathan  and  Gad  had  been  David's  political  advisers, 
Ahijah  had  stirred  Jeroboam  to  revolt,  Elijah  had 
resisted  Ahab,  Elisha  had  fanned  the  rebellion  of 
Jehu,  Amos  thunders  against  the  misrule  of  the  king 
of  Israel,  Isaiah  denounces  the  landlords  and  the 
usurers,  Micah  charges  them  with  blood-guiltiness ; 
Jeremiah  and  the  later  prophets,  though  they  strike 
a  more  intimate  note  of  personal  repentance,  strike  it 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  47 

as  the  prelude  to  that  national  restoration  for  which 
they  hunger  as  exiles. 

The  first  chapters  of  Isaiah  are  typical  of  the  Old 
Testament  point  of  view.  Just  as  the  prophets  of  the 
nineteenth  century  thundered  against  the  "  Christian  " 
employers  of  Lancashire,  and  told  them  their  houses 
were  cemented  with  the  blood  of  little  children,1  so 
Isaiah  cries  against  his  generation :  Your  govern- 
ing classes  companion  with  thieves ;  behold,  you 
build  up  Sion  with  blood.  Their  ceremonial  and 
their  Sabbath-keeping  are  an  abomination  to  God. 
"  When  ye  spread  forth  your  hands,  I  will  hide  mine 
eyes  from  you.  Your  hands  are  full  of  blood."  The 
poor  man  is  robbed.  The  rich  exact  usury.  "  Woe 
unto  you  that  lay  house  to  house  and  field  to  field, 
that  you  may  dwell  alone  in  the  midst  of  the  land." 
u  Wash  you,  make  you  clean ;  put  away  the  evil  of 
your  doings  from  before  mine  eyes ;  cease  to  do 
evil :  learn  to  do  well,  seek  judgment,  relieve  the 
oppressed,  judge  the  fatherless,  plead  for  the  widow. 
Come  now,  let  us  reason  together,  saith  the  Lord. 
Though  your  sins  be  blood-coloured,  they  shall  be  as 
white  as  snow ;  though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they 
shall  be  as  wool.  If  ye  be  willing  and  obedient,  ye 
shall  eat  the  good  of  the  land.  But  if  ye  refuse  and 
rebel,  ye  shall  be  devoured  by  the  sword." 

And  now  the  ten  tribes  of  the  Northern  Kingdom 
have  been  carried  into  captivity.  The  Southern 
kingdom  is  nearing  its  end.  In  this  kingdom  the 
reign  of  Josiah,  a  genuine  reformer,  is  marked  by  the 

1  See  Chapter  IX.  of  the  present  book  for  condition  of  factory  workers 
and  increase  of  wealth  under  Christo-capitalism. 


48        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

discovery  of  the  Book  of  the  Law.  Jeremiah  and 
Ezekiel  are  the  prophets  of  this  period.  The  code  of 
Josiah  incorporates  the  earlier  Book  of  the  Covenant 
and  possibly  some  custom  law,  and  applies  the  older 
legislation  to  the  needs  of  the  time  in  the  spirit  of  the 
prophetic  period  that  has  intervened.  The  promise 
of  health  and  prosperity  is  reiterated.  The  laws  are 
to  be  taught  to  the  children  as  part  of  their  religious 
education.  All  sickness  shall  vanish  from  the  nation, 
if  men  will  remember  God  and  the  requirements  of 
His  justice.  The  strict  legislation  against  interest  in 
any  shape  or  form  is  repeated.  Its  transgression  is  to 
be  punished  by  death. 

It  is  the  fashion  to  sneer  at  law-givers  and  prophets 
on  account  of  their  religious  bigotry  and  exclusiveness. 
Why  should  they  be  so  concerned  to  keep  Israel  from 
contact  with  the  gods  and  ideals  of  other  nations? 
It  does  not  matter  what  a  man  believes  so  long  as 
his  actions  are  in  the  right.  The  prophets  would 
have  answered  promptly,  the  economic  action  of  the 
nation  is  in  the  wrong,  because  the  nation  has  lusted 
after  other  gods.  And,  in  point  of  fact,  history  is  on 
the  side  of  the  prophets.  For  we  have  seen  that 
when  Solomon  worshipped  other  divinities  the  nation 
groaned  under  an  economic  burden  too  grievous  to  be 
borne.  The  period  of  landlordism  and  capitalism 
was  the  period  of  faithlessness  to  the  jealous  God  of 
Israel.  Just  as  Palestinian  theology  has  its  expression 
in  something  not  unlike  modern  socialism,  so  Assyrian 
and  Babylonian  theology  has  its  expression  in  some- 
thing not  unlike  modern  commercialism.  When  the 
Book  of  the  Covenant  is  insisting  on  loyalty  to  the 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  49 

national  God,  and  nothing  per  cent.,  and  the  rights  of 
the  people  to  their  land,  imperialism,  landlordism,  and 
usury  flourish  in  the  countries  all  around  them.  The 
rate  of  legal  interest  throughout  the  Babylonish 
empire  is  twenty  per  cent,  the  laws  of  Menu  permit 
twenty-four  per  cent,  and  Egyptian  legislation  only 
interferes  to  forbid  more  than  a  hundred  per  cent. 

The  fresh  notes  in  the  newly  discovered  legislation 
are  the  land-mark  law,  which  sternly  forbids  en- 
croachment upon  peasant  rights ;  consideration  for 
the  foreigner ;  additional  sanitary  and  food  laws ; 
tithe  regulations  on  behalf  of  widows,  orphans, 
foreigners,  etc. ;  that  those  who  have  no  economic 
independence  should  eat  and  be  satisfied  ;  that  loans 
should  be  given  cheerfully,  not  only  without  any 
interest,  but  even  at  the  risk  of  losing  the  principal. 
To  withhold  a  loan  because  the  year  of  release  is  at 
hand,  in  which  the  principal  is  no  longer  recoverable, 
is  described  as  a  grave  sin.  When  you  are  compelled 
to  free  your  slaves,  you  must  give  them  sufficient 
capital  to  embark  upon  some  industry  which  shall 
prevent  their  falling  back  into  slavery.  A  number  of 
holidays  are  insisted  upon.  There  must  be  no  more 
crushing  of  the  poor  out  of  existence,  for  God  cares 
for  those  people  who  have  been  driven  to  poverty, 
and  they  shall  never  cease  out  of  the  land.  Howbeit 
there  shall  be  no  poor  with  you,  for  the  Lord  will 
bless  you,  if  you  will  obey  these  laws. 

We  do  not  know  how  far  the  nation  responded 
to  these  social  ideals,  but  the  year  606  B.C.  marks 
the  overthrow  of  the  Southern  Kingdom,  and  a 
few  years  later  the  destruction  of  the  Temple.  In 

4 


50        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

586  B.C.  the  peasant  population  is  deported,  and  a 
proletariat  is  left.  In  536  B.C.  a  few  return,  but 
this  remnant  becomes  enslaved  to  the  Persian  king. 
Usury  and  rapacity  are  everywhere  rampant. 
Drought  and  crop  failures  increase  the  misery. 
The  richer  Jews,  instead  of  learning  compassion, 
prey  upon  the  miseries  of  the  poor.  In  Malachi 
and  Ezekiel  we  read  of  fields  mortgaged,  usurious 
loans,  and  child-slavery. 

Nehemiah  seems  to  have  been  the  instrument  of 
national  repentance. 

Many  had  mortgaged  their  lands  and  vineyards  to 
pay  exorbitant  taxes  to  the  king.  They  had  even 
sold  their  children  to  meet  their  debts.  Nehemiah 
angrily  rebukes  the  rich  oppressors,  and  commands 
them  to  restore  the  land  to  the  people,  and  to  give 
them  back  a  hundredth  part  of  the  money,  corn, 
wine,  and  oil  that  they  exact  of  them.  Nehemiah's 
demands  are  listened  to,  and  restoration  is  made.1 

For  examples  of  the  outspokenness  of  the  prophets, 
the  book  of  Amos  should  be  studied,  as  also  the 
words  of  Ezekiel  and  of  the  later  Isaiah.  Ezekiel 
takes  his  stand  against  pessimism  and  fatalism  (chaps, 
xviii.  and  xix.).  Each  generation  is  responsible  for 
its  own  deeds.  However  evil  the  father's  life,  the  son 
may  turn  and  act  justly.  He  will  not  be  punished 
for  his  father's  transgressions.  He  that 

hath  not  oppressed  any,  but  hath  restored  to  the 
debtor  his  pledge,  hath  spoiled  none  by  violence,  hath 
given  his  bread  to  the  hungry,  and  hath  covered  the  naked 
with  a  garment ;  he  that  hath  not  given  forth  upon  usury, 

1  Neh.  v.  4-13. 


THE  JE  WISH  SCRIPTURES  5 1 

neither  hath  taken  any  increase,  that  hath  withdrawn  his 
hand  from  iniquity,  hath  executed  true  judgment  between 
man  and  man,  hath  walked  in  my  statutes,  and  hath  kept 
my  judgments,  to  deal  truly ;  he  is  just,  he  shall  surely 
live,  saith  the  Lord  God. 

With  this  should  be  compared  a  passage  in 
chapter  xxii. : — 

Her  princes  in  the  midst  thereof  are  like  wolves  ravening 
the  prey,  to  shed  blood,  and  to  destroy  souls,  to  get 
dishonest  gain.  And  her  prophets  have  daubed  them  with 
untempered  mortar,  seeing  vanity,  and  divining  lies  unto 
them,  saying,  Thus  saith  the  Lord  God,  when  the  Lord  hath 
not  spoken.  The  people  of  the  land  have  used  oppression, 
and  exercised  robbery,  and  have  vexed  the  poor  and  needy : 
yea,  they  have  oppressed  the  stranger  wrongfully.  And  I 
sought  for  a  man  among  them,  that  should  make  up  the 
hedge,  and  stand  in  the  gap  before  me  for  the  land,  that  I 
should  not  destroy  it :  but  I  found  none.  Therefore  have 
I  poured  out  mine  indignation  upon  them ;  I  have  con- 
sumed them  with  the  fire  of  my  wrath  :  their  own  way 
have  I  recompensed  upon  their  heads,  saith  the  Lord  God. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  just  as  the  sentence  in  Isaiah 
about  our  sins  being  as  scarlet,  so  dear  to  the  hearts 
of  revivalists,  is  wrenched  from  its  moorings,  which 
are  social  and  revolutionary,  so  also  the  Prayer  Book 
sentence,  "  when  the  wicked  man  turneth  away  from 
his  wickedness,"  is  taken  from  this  social  passage,  in 
which  the  wickedness  is  defined  as  taking  increase, 
and  in  other  ways  oppressing  the  poor. 

The  second  Isaiah  (chap.  Iviii.),  in  the  passage 
commencing,  "  Cry  aloud  and  spare  not,"  lifts  up  his 
voice  like  a  trumpet  against  the  rich  man's  injustice, 
thieving,  and  hypocrisy : — 

Is  it  such  a  fast  that  I  have  chosen  ?  a  day  for  a  man  to 
afflict  his  soul  ?  is  it  to  bow  down  his  head  as  a  bulrush, 


52        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

and  to  spread  sackcloth  and  ashes  under  him?  wilt  thou 
call  this  a  fast,  and  an  acceptable  day  to  the  Lord  ?  Is  not 
this  the  fast  that  I  have  chosen?  to  loose  the  bands  of 
wickedness,  to  undo  the  heavy  burdens,  and  to  let  the 
oppressed  go  free,  and  that  ye  break  every  yoke  ?  Is  it  not 
to  deal  thy  bread  to  the  hungry,  and  that  thou  bring  the 
poor  that  are  cast  out  to  thy  house?  when  thou  seest  the 
naked,  that  thou  cover  him ;  and  that  thou  hide  not  thy- 
self from  thine  own  flesh  ?  And  if  thou  draw  out  thy  soul 
to  the  hungry,  and  satisfy  the  afflicted  soul ;  then  shall  thy 
light  rise  in  obscurity,  and  thy  darkness  be  as  the  noon  day  : 
and  the  Lord  shall  eoride  thee  continually,  and  satisfy  thy 
soul  in  drought,  and  make  fat  thy  bones :  and  thou  shalt 
be  like  a  walled  garden,  and  like  a  spring  of  water,  whose 
waters  fail  not.  And  they  that  shall  be  of  thee  shall  build 
the  old  waste  places :  thou  shalt  raise  up  the  foundations 
of  many  generations ;  and  thou  shalt  be  called,  The  repairer 
of  the  breach,  The  restorer  of  paths  to  dwell  in. 

The  result  of  this  revival  was  that  the  people 
promised  to  observe  the  seventh  year  of  release  and 
to  forego  the  exaction  of  all  debts.  This  leads  on 
to  the  reforming  legislation  of  the  time  of  Ezra,  which 
is  now  considered  to  be  the  third  and  last  layer  of 
the  Law,  and  corresponds  to  much  of  our  book 
of  Leviticus. 

One  notes  particularly  in  this  legislation  that  the 
corners  of  the  field  are  to  be  left  for  the  poor,  as  also 
the  gleaning  of  harvests ;  the  poor  have  a  right  to 
pick  up  the  fallen  fruits  in  the  orchards ;  oppression 
and  robbery,  especially  of  land,  are  strictly  prohibited  ; 
workmen  are  to  be  paid  by  the  day  at  sundown ; 
men  are  not  to  be  worked  on  the  holidays  ;  the 
fallow  year  is  to  be  observed  for  the  sake  of  the 
hired  servants  ;  actual  slavery  has  now  disappeared  ; 
there  is  to  be  no  favouritism  nor  unjust  judgment, 


THE  JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  53 

nor  nourishing  of  secret  enmities  against  one's 
neighbour,  for  you  are  to  remember  to  "love  your 
neighbour  as  yourself."  Every  fiftieth  year  is  the 
year  of  liberty.  In  that  year  all  Hebrew  servants 
and  their  families  are  to  be  unconditionally  freed,  and 
to  return  to  their  peasant  holdings.  For  the  freehold 
of  agricultural  land  and  cottages  is  never  to  be  sold. 
Only  leasehold  sales  are  permissible,  and  the  price 
of  these  is  to  be  determined  by  the  average  value  of 
the  crops  till  the  next  year  of  release.  House  pro- 
perty in  the  towns  can,  under  certain  conditions,  be 
sold  outright.  This  code  marks  the  total  abolition 
of  Hebrew  slavery. 

There  would  seem  to  have  been  a  genuine  attempt 
on  the  part  of  the  nation  to  observe  this  legislation, 
but  with  the  development  of  commerce  and  of  credit 
operations,  the  strain  of  obedience  to  laws  whose 
observance  would  have  been  more  possible  in  simpler 
and  more  primitive  times  is  greatly  increased.  No 
doubt  this  economic  development  would  lead  to  all 
kinds  of  evasions,  with  which  we  may  compare  the 
evasions  permitted  in  Christ's  time  by  even  such 
rigorists  as  Hillel.1  We  have  no  evidence  of  the 
material  conditions  of  the  people  under  the  later 
Persian  and  Greek  dominions.  Josephus,  who  is  the 
authority  for  the  Greek  period,  was  unfortunately  a 
snob,  and  showed  no  interest  in  social  matters. 
Wealth  was  increasing  with  the  increase  of  the 
population ;  perhaps  we  may  infer  that,  along  with 
commercial  development  and  contact  with  other 
civilisations,  poverty  was  also  on  the  increase. 

1  And  also  the  modifications  of  the  later  canon  law  ;  cf.  Chapter  VI. 


54        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

The  Maccabean  period  sees  a  temporary  improve- 
ment. There  is  a  recovery  of  national  independence 
under  the  loose  suzerainty  of  Rome.  The  Jews 
acquire  a  valuable  sea-board  and  a  consequent 
over-sea  commerce. 

Then  did  they  till  their  ground  in  peace,  and  the  earth 
gave  her  increase,  and  the  trees  of  the  field  their  fruit.  The 
ancient  men  sat  all  in  the  streets,  communing  together  of 
good  things,  and  the  young  men  put  on  glorious  and  war- 
like apparel.  He  provided  victuals  for  the  cities,  and  set  in 
them  all  manner  of  munition,  so  that  his  honourable  name 
was  renowned  unto  the  end  of  the  world.  He  made  peace 
in  the  land,  and  Israel  rejoiced  with  great  joy,  for  every  man 
sat  under  his  vine  and  his  fig-tree,  and  there  was  none  to 
fray  them.1 

1  i  Mac.  xiv.  8-14. 


Ill 

THE  GOSPELS 

Goodness  as  preparation  for  the  Kingdom — National  expectancy — 
Various  views  of  the  Kingdom — John  the  Baptizer — His  revolu- 
tionary message — St  John  and  our  Lord  contrasted — The  Gospel 
of  the  Kingdom — A  Kingdom  of  body,  mind,  and  spirit — Christ's 
followers — His  popularity — The  children  of  the  Kingdom  to  be 
cast  out — His  reception  at  Nazareth — An  "  unpatriotic  "  sermon — 
The  Peter  Gospel  emphasising  His  unconventionality  —  Luke's 
account  of  the  kernel  of  His  teaching — Blessed  are  ye  poor — The 
poor  understand  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount — The  Sermon  explained 
— Inward  conversion  and  outward  change — Not  to  destroy  but  to 
complete  the  old  material-spiritual  conception — The  things  that 
are  Caesar's — General  principles  and  their  varying  application — 
Can  the  present  system  claim  to  be  in  any  sense  an  application  ? — 
The  question  of  compulsion  and  Count  Tolstoy's  interpretation — 
The  use  of  the  parable  —  From  nationalist  to  internationalist 
Kingdom— Parables  of  the  Kingdom— Was  the  Kingdom  to  be 
cataclysmic  ?  —  The  evolutionary  theory — The  seed  growing 
secretly— The  sower,  the  net,  and  the  tree— The  pearl  beyond  price 
— The  unjust  judge — Eagerness,  persistency,  and  alertness  essential 
— Parable  of  the  talents  and  of  the  steward  of  injustice — Attitude 
of  the  Pharisees — Dives  and  Lazarus — The  rich  young  landlord 
and  Zaccheus — Judge  or  divider — Parable  of  the  labourers  in  the 
vineyard — The  alabaster  box — The  poor  always  with  you — The 
last  judgment — God's  Utopia  and  overmastering  life — The  rich 
young  man  again— A  general  and  not  particular  application — A 
domesticated  Christ. 


Ill 

THE   GOSPELS 

"Whatever  aspect  (of  the  Kingdom  of  God)  any  man  emphasized, 
it  was  still  a  national  and  collective  idea.  It  involved  the  restoration 
of  Israel  as  a  nation  to  outward  independence,  security,  and  power, 
such  as  it  had  under  the  Davidic  kings.  It  involved  that  social  justice, 
prosperity,  and  happiness  for  which  the  Law  and  the  Prophets  called, 
and  for  which  the  common  people  always  longed.  It  involved  that 
religious  purity  and  holiness  of  which  the  nation  had  always  fallen 
short.  And  all  this  was  to  come  in  an  ideal  degree,  such  as  God  alone 
by  direct  intervention  could  bestow.  When  Jesus  used  the  phrase 
'the  Kingdom  of  God,'  it  inevitably  evoked  that  whole  sphere  of 
thought  in  the  minds  of  His  hearers.  If  He  did  not  mean  by  it  the 
substance  of  what  they  meant  by  it,  it  was  a  mistake  to  use  the  term. 
If  He  did  not  mean  the  consummation  of  the  theocratic  hope,  but 
merely  an  internal  blessedness  for  individuals  with  the  hope  of  getting 
to  Heaven,  why  did  He  use  the  words  around  which  all  the  collective 
hopes  clustered?  In  that  case  it  was  not  only  misleading,  but  a 
dangerous  phrase.  It  unfettered  the  political  hopes  of  the  crowd  :  it 
drew  down  upon  Him  the  suspicion  of  the  government  :  it  actually  led 
to  His  death."— RAUSCHENBUSCH,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis, 
PP.  57,  58. 

SINCE  the  days  of  the  Jewish  Captivity,  religion 
had  become  more  intimate  and  introspective.  Oppor- 
tunity was  lacking  for  political  expression,  and  its 
absence  drove  the  people  in  upon  themselves,  and 
the  aspect  of  the  individual  soul  and  its  God  was 
developed.  During  the  period  of  the  Maccabees  the 


58        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

normal  expression  was  regained,  but  even  then  the 
nation  was  not  free  of  the  suzerainty  of  Rome.  But 
goodness,  though  individualised,  was  always  treated 
as  a  preparation  for  the  national  restoration,  No 
man  by  individual  righteousness  could  live  the  life 
God  had  intended  for  him  ;  that  life  could  alone  be 
lived  in  the  Golden  Age  of  deliverance  and  of  cor- 
porate national  independence.  Such  a  restoration 
of  God's  Kingdom  was  expected  on  all  sides.  The 
kingdom  of  the  Maccabees  had  broken  in  pieces 
through  force  of  external  opposition  and  internal 
discord.  So  far  as  human  foresight  went,  it  looked 
as  though  no  recovery  of  the  nation  would  ever 
again  be  possible.  And  yet  the  general  expectancy 
grew  stronger  every  day.  Now  and  again  crude 
revolutionary  leaders  arose  who,  after  futile  resist- 
ance to  the  Roman  power,  were  executed  along  with 
their  followers.  Some  thought  the  Kingdom  would 
be  restored  by  means  of  one  of  these  mad  Mullahs 
or  Messiahs.  Others,  despairing  of  a  general  restora- 
tion, were  ready  to  retire  into  country  places  and 
set  up  ascetic  communities  withdrawn  from  com- 
merce and  from  sensuous  enjoyment.  Meanwhile 
the  Sadducees  and  Herodians,  the  Erastians  of  that 
day,  shrugged  their  shoulders  and  scoffed  at  the 
turbulent  enthusiasm  of  the  crowds.  The  Roman 
dominion  suited  them  well  enough.  The  scribes 
and  Pharisees  looked  forward,  but  with  none  of  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  revolutionaries,  to  the  coming  of 
the  Kingdom.  Meanwhile  the  law  must  be  rigor- 
ously observed — not  indeed  the  whole  law,  but  the 
law  as  expurgated  by  the  rigid  Puritan  mind.  Self- 


THE   GOSPELS  59 

exalted,  complacent,  despising  others,  they  were  a 
party  of  fussy,  trivial  literalists  regarding  the  common 
people,  who  knew  not  the  law,  as  accursed. 

Above  the  clamour  of  these  contending  parties  is 
raised  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness. 
John  the  Baptizer  begins  his  mission  in  the  wild 
country  of  South  Jordan,  not  far  from  the  Dead  Sea. 
His  religion  is  not  so  much  a  gospel  as  a  call  to 
repentance  in  preparation  for  a  gospel.  Do  good 
works,  and  show  your  change  of  heart  and  mind  by 
the  usual  method  of  immersion  in  the  Jordan.  He 
was  here  as  a  herald  to  clear  away  the  jungle  under- 
growth and  make  straight  the  Messiah's  path.  A 
total  abstainer,  he  lived  the  simple  life,  clothing  him- 
self in  coarse  stuff  and  eating  just  what  came  to  hand 
in  the  wilderness.  The  Kingdom  was  close  upon 
them  ;  it  was  essential  that  they  should  return  to  the 
old  paths  to  walk  in  them.  This  repentance,  this 
internal  change  of  front,  though  essential,  was  not  the 
Kingdom  of  God  any  more  than  a  little  girl's  frock 
is  the  party  to  which  she  is  going.  Repentance  will 
involve  the  levelling  doctrine  of  the  ancient  Law  and 
Prophets. 

Every  valley  shall  be  filled, 

Every  mountain  and  hill  brought  low ; 

And  the  crooked  shall  be  made  straight, 

And  the  rough  ways  made  smooth ; 

And  all  flesh  shall  see  the  salvation  of  God. 

His  preaching  causes  a  great  sensation  ;  everybody 
makes  the  excursion  into  the  wilderness  to  hear  him. 
When  the  religious  leaders  come  to  his  baptism,  he 
cries :  O  generation  of  snakes,  who  hath  warned  you 


60       SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

to  flee  from  the  coming  wrath?  Bring  forth  fruits 
meet  for  repentance.  Don't  cheat  yourselves  into  a 
false  security  by  thinking  that  you  have  Abraham 
to  your  father.  Man  is  not  redeemed  by  the  blood 
of  his  ancestors,  but  by  his  own  works.  God  is  able 
of  these  very  stones  to  raise  up  children  to  Abraham. 
The  axe  is  even  now  laid  to  the  root  of  the  tree ; 
every  fruitless  tree  shall  be  destroyed.  All  worthless 
things  are  to  be  burnt  with  unquenchable  fire.  And 
the  people  themselves  ask  him  what  they  are  to  do, 
and  he  answers,  they  must  equalise  their  property ; 
the  man  with  two  coats  must  share  with  the  man  who 
has  none ;  so  likewise  with  money.  The  soldiers 
ask  what  are  they  to  do,  and  he  tells  them  not  to 
add  to  their  wages  by  robbing  the  peasantry,  on 
whom  they  are  quartered.  The  tax-gatherers  are  not 
to  cheat,  and  not  to  squeeze  the  last  farthing  of 
profit  out  of  the  people.  As  to  the  nature  of  the 
Kingdom  itself  he  has  no  clear  vision,  but  he  knows 
that  such  social  works  as  these  are  essential  if  they 
are  to  enjoy  it,  if  its  coming  is  not  to  grind  them  as 
powder.  The  time  is  fulfilled,  the  Kingdom  is  im- 
minent ;  there  is  One  coming  immediately  who  will 
not  baptize  with  water,  but  with  fire.  The  terrible 
Messiah  is  even  now  at  the  doors. 

John  and  Jesus  are  worlds  asunder,  yet  a  fulgent 
sincerity  rafts  them  together  in  the  midst  of  the 
slush  and  drift  of  that  turbulent  age.  The  last  of  the 
prophets  rebukes  the  upstart  king  for  immorality, 
and  the  rebuke  costs  him  his  life. 

"  Now  after  that  John  was  delivered  up,  Jesus  came 
into  Galilee,  preaching  the  gospel  of  God,  and  saying, 


THE    GOSPELS  61 

The  time  is  fulfilled,  and  the  kingdom  of  God  is  at 
hand  ;  repent  ye,  and  believe  in  the  gospel."  His 
coming  is  described  as  the  scattering  of  the  proud, 
the  dethroning  of  princes,  the  raising  of  the  humble, 
the  filling  of  the  hungry,  and  the  rich  sent  empty 
away.  Before  His  mission,  in  the  loneliness  of  the 
country,  He  is  besieged  with  temptations.  Was  He 
after  all  the  Messiah  chosen  to  redeem  His  country  ? 
What  was  to  be  the  nature  of  His  mission  ?  Had  He 
the  power  to  carry  it  through  ?  But  He  proved  Him- 
self the  conqueror  of  these  doubts,  and  came  again 
into  Galilee  with  the  good  news  of  the  impending 
Kingdom.  The  time  is  ripe,  the  Kingdom  near  ;  turn 
and  believe  the  glorious  news.  John  in  his  prison 
heard  and  wondered.  Was  this  really  the  Deliverer  ? 
The  reply  was  swift  and  decisive.  Disease  was  being 
defeated,  ignorance  dispersed,  evil  crushed.  Body, 
mind,  and  spirit  were  being  redeemed.  Such  were  the 
signs  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  At  once  Christ 
begins  to  gather  round  Him  a  society  of  men  and 
women,  alert  and  true,  who  have  eyes  to  see  and  ears 
to  hear,  and  begins  to  train  them  into  an  adequate 
conception  of  the  Kingdom  and  the  King.  It  is  a 
band,  for  the  most  part,  of  fishermen  and  peasants. 
A  tax-gatherer  and  a  harlot,  both  belonging  to  classes 
ostracised  from  organised  religion  and  society  for 
disreputability,  are  members  of  that  band. 

He  goes  about  the  commercial  centres  and  villages 
of  Galilee,  and  the  people  are  amazed  at  His  cures 
and  His  preaching.  Everywhere  He  rebukes  disease, 
restores  men's  minds,  strengthens  their  bodies,  and 
preaches  the  Golden  Age.  He  cannot  escape  the 


62        SOCIALISM  IN   CHURCH  HISTORY 

crowds.  They  throng  Him,  not  only  from  Galilee, 
but  from  the  remotest  parts  of  Palestine.  Among 
those  healed  is  the  slave  of  a  foreign  soldier,  who  is  a 
half  convert  to  Judaism  and  popular  with  the  religious 
leaders.  The  soldier's  faith  leads  Christ  to  exclaim, 
to  the  astonishment  of  the  people,  Many  shall  come 
from  the  East  and  West,  and  shall  be  on  an  equality 
with  Abraham  and  the  Jewish  heroes  in  God's 
Kingdom,  and  the  children  of  the  Kingdom  shall  be 
expelled.  He  gives  no  elaborate  definition  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven,  but  only  insists  that  this 
Kingdom  which  was  familiar  to  them,  about  which 
they  could  read  in  their  law  and  their  prophets,  was 
to  burst  asunder  the  Jewish  barriers  and  let  all  men 
in.  Hints  there  had  been  of  such  an  universalism  in 
the  Old  Covenant,  but  for  the  most  part  that  Covenant 
had  been  nationalist,  and  the  Jews  of  Christ's  day 
were  narrowly  exclusive.  The  people  of  Galilee 
believe  in  Him,  although  it  is  doubtful  how  far  they 
understand  His  message.  His  native  village  is  an 
exception.  He  has  become  something  of  a  celebrity, 
and  comes  to  Nazareth,  and  is  allowed  to  expound 
the  Scriptures  in  the  local  meeting-house.  He  reads 
the  passage  about  the  year  of  liberty,  when  the  land 
returns  to  the  people  and  the  oppressed  are  set  free : — 

The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  me, 

Therefore  he  has  anointed  me  to  preach  glad  tidings 

to  the  poor ; 

He  has  sent  me  to  proclaim  release  to  the  captives, 
And  recovery  of  sight  to  the  blind, 
To  set  the  oppressed  at  liberty, 
To  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord. 

He  hands  the  Scripture  to  an  attendant  and  sits 


THE   GOSPELS  63 

down;  the  eyes  of  all  are  fixed  on  Him  and  He 
begins  to  say  to  them,  "  To-day  has  this  Scripture  been 
fulfilled  in  your  ears."  They  are  puzzled,  and  ask 
each  other,  "  Is  not  this  Joseph's  son  ?  "  He  had  made 
an  astounding  claim,  but  He  does  not  back  it  up 
with  the  cures  and  other  mighty  works  which  have 
made  His  reputation  in  other  places.  He  answers 
their  doubt  with  the  words,  "  No  prophet  is  acceptable 
in  his  own  country."  In  truth,  Elijah  was  not  sent  to 
the  widows  of  his  own  people,  but  to  a  foreigner  in 
the  land  of  Sidon.  There  were  many  lepers  in  Israel 
in  Elijah's  time,  but  only  the  foreigner  Naaman  was 
healed.  This  unpatriotic  teaching  infuriates  them, 
and  they  hustle  Him  up  the  brow  of  the  hill,  and 
would  have  hurled  Him  down. 

These  early  days  of  His  brief  ministry  were  often 
retold  to  the  multitudes  by  St  Peter  after  Christ's 
death,  and  the  Apostle  would  dwell  upon  His  uncon- 
ventionality  and  His  audacity.  St  Peter  grouped 
together  in  his  teaching  five  instances1  of  this,  and 
each  one  of  the  five  was  a  separate  offence  against 
accepted  religious  standards.  Sometimes  He  kept 
the  letter  of  the  Scriptures ;  more  often  He  broke  it. 
But  whether  breaking  or  keeping  it,  Christ  would 
always  bring  His  hearers  down  below  the  letter  to 
the  spirit  and  motive  which  had  inspired  it.  The  old 
morality  had  been  made  for  man,  not  man  for 
morality.  Human  needs  were  above  the  letter  of 
the  law. 

Another  account   of  His  teaching  summarises   it 

1  In  the  Gospel  according  to   St   Mark,   the  scribe  of  the   Peter 
teaching. 


64        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

as  follows : — "  Blessed  are  ye  poor,  for  yours  is  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  Blessed  are  ye  that  hunger  now, 
for  ye  shall  be  filled.  Blessed  are  ye  that  weep  now, 
for  ye  shall  laugh.  Blessed  are  ye  when  men  shall 
hate  you,  and  separate  you  from  their  company,  and 
revile  you  :  rejoice  and  be  glad,  your  reward  is  great  in 
heaven ;  for  in  the  same  manner  did  their  fathers  unto 
the  prophets.  Woe  unto  you  that  are  rich,  for  you 
have  received  your  consolation.  Woe  unto  you  that 
are  full  now,  for  ye  shall  hunger.  Love  your  enemies. 
Bless  them  that  curse  you.  Pray  for  them  that  sneer 
at  you.  Offer  the  cheek  to  the  smiter,  Withhold 
not  your  coat  from  him  that  takes  your  cloak.  Give 
to  everyone  that  asks;  and  of  him  that  takes  away 
your  goods  ask  them  not  again.  And  as  ye  would 
that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  also  to  them.  .  .  . 
And  if  you  lend  to  them  of  whom  ye  hope  to  receive, 
what  thank  have  ye  ?  Even  sinners  lend  to  sinners  to 
receive  as  much.  But  love  your  enemies  and  do  them 
good,  and  lend  hoping  for  nothing  again."  These 
passages  are  generally  interpreted  as  an  appendage  to 
normal  everyday  commercial  life ;  but  without  doubt 
our  Lord  meant  them  as  the  basis  of  all  life. 

Nowhere  did  He  bless  poverty  ;  but  to  those  poor 
men  of  Galilee,  who  had  ears  to  hear  and  eyes  to  see, 
He  says,  Blessed  are  ye  poor  men,  for  yours  is  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  You  understand  it ;  you  have 
made  it  your  own ;  you  believe  in  it.  They  may 
persecute  you  and  revile  you,  but  they  cannot  take  the 
Kingdom  out  of  your  heart,  or  shake  your  determina- 
tion that  it  shall  be  established  on  the  earth.  It  was 
these  people  who  could  most  becomingly  pray,  "  Thy 


THE   GOSPELS  65 

Kingdom  come  on  earth  as  in  heaven ;  give  us 
day  by  day  bread  sufficient  for  the  day."  It  was 
these  men  who  would  best  understand  that  the  heavy 
labour  they  had  to  undergo  was  the  result  of  the 
system  of  rent  and  usury  and  oppressive  taxation 
which  was  ruining  their  country,  a  system  which  was 
the  outcome  of  the  ethics  of  the  kingdoms  of  this 
world.  They  would  understand  that  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  commonwealth  of  God  based  on  Divine 
justice  they  would  find  a  lighter  yoke  and  an  easier 
burden.  His  teaching  is  again  summarised  in 
another  account  as  follows  : — Store  not  up  individual 
private  fortunes.  You  cannot  serve  God  and  greed. 
Don't  be  over  anxious  for  your  life,  for  food  or  drink 
or  clothing.  The  birds  do  not  sow  or  reap,  nor 
gather  into  barns,  yet  your  heavenly  Father  feedeth 
them :  are  you  not  of  much  more  value  than  they  ? 
The  lilies  of  the  field  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin, 
and  yet  they  are  beautifully  clad.  If  God  clothes 
them,  shall  He  not  much  more  clothe  you  ?  He  is 
your  Father.  He  knows  you  need  these  necessities. 
Seek  ye  first  His  kingdom  and  His  justice,  and  all 
these  things  shall  be  added  to  you. 

If  one  compares  this  summary  with  the  teaching  of 
the  Old  Testament  on  the  subject  of  the  Kingdom — 
namely,  that  a  commonwealth  based  on  Divine 
justice  must  exclude  all  non-producers,  that  is,  all 
possibility  of  living  upon  others  by  means  of  rent  or 
interest,  that  the  earth  and  its  product  is  to  be  the 
property  of  all  the  subjects  of  the  Kingdom,  that  God 
has  provided  bountifully  for  the  needs  of  all,  that 
they  have  only  to  obey  these  just  laws  of  anti-rent 

5 


66        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

and  anti-interest  to  discover  that  God's  earth  and  its 
product  is  sufficient  for  their  needs — it  is  easy  to  see 
with  certainty  and  without  shadow  of  doubt  that  our 
Lord  is  referring  to  no  mere  inward  change  of  soul 
on  the  part  of  separate  individuals,  but  to  an  inward 
conversion  of  the  said  individuals  regarding  them- 
selves as  a  united  people,  a  change  in  view-point, 
which  will  immediately  express  itself  in  collective 
action.  People  who  do  not  think,  but  clothe  them- 
selves in  second-hand  thoughts,  object  to  modern 
socialist  legislation  because  of  its  outwardness.  When 
they  begin  to  think,  they  will  understand  that  no 
revolutionary  legislation  is  ever  carried  through 
Parliament  without  first  a  tremendous  agitation 
throughout  the  country,  with  its  appeal  to  the  heart 
and  mind  of  the  nation,  and  that  in  social  reform 
a  change  of  heart  does  actually  precede  a  change  of 
law.  Lord  Shaftesbury's  Factory  Acts  were  pre- 
ceded by  the  conversion  of  thousands  to  a  more 
human  view  of  life.  The  legislation  for  the  feeding  of 
school-children  is  the  immediate  effect  of  a  socialist 
agitation  of  some  twenty  years,  which  has  at  last  con- 
verted the  people  of  England  to  a  sense  of  pity,  and 
that  sense  of  pity  has  been  embodied  in  a  law ;  the 
result  of  that  law  is  to  heal  the  bodies  of  little  children 
and  to  bring  hope  to  their  souls.  I  four  Lord  had 
meant  to  contradict  the  Old  Testament  idea  of  the 
Kingdom,  the  idea  of  a  people  embodying  its  inward 
belief  in  justice  and  mercy  in  outward  and  material 
laws,  He  would  have  been  very  careful  to  say  so,  but 
He  deliberately  denies  this,  saying  :  "  Think  not  that 
I  came  to  destroy  the  law,  or  the  prophets :  I  came 


THE   GOSPELS  67 

not  to  destroy,  but  to   complete.     For  verily    I  say 
unto  you,  Till  heaven  and  earth  pass  away,  one  jot  or 
one  tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass  away  from  the   law 
till   all   things   be   accomplished.      Whosoever   shall 
break  one  of  these  least   commandments,  and    shall 
teach  men  so,  he  shall  be  called  least  in  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.  .  .  .  Except    your  justice    shall    exceed 
that  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no  wise 
enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven."     And  yet  He  Himself 
broke  the  letter  of  the  law,  and  defended  His  followers 
when    they    broke    it.     Taking    His   teaching   as   a 
whole,  we  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  outward 
law  meant  always  for    Him   the   expression   or   the 
safeguarding  of  some  human  need,  that  He  wanted 
to  bring  His  people  back  to  the  living  principles  of 
law  and  prophet.     The  principle  underlying  the  tribal 
peasant-proprietorship  and  anti-usury  law  of  the  Old 
Testament  was  that  in  a  kingdom   of  righteousness 
no  one  should  be  heavy-burdened  in  order  that  others 
should  escape  the  burden  of  work  altogether.     This 
principle  is  reasserted  in  early  Christian  times  in  the 
Church's   economic    motto:    "If  any    man   will   not    ! 
work,  neither  shall  he  eat."     We  are  told  that  Christ 
came  to  lay  down  general  principles :  this  is  one  of 
the  principles  which  He  laid  down.     He  laid  it  down 
that  it  might  be  carried  into  effect   by  a   collective 
people  who  had  become  convinced  of  its  truth.     He 
did  not  say  to   them,  You  shall  carry  it  into  effect 
by  means  of  peasant-proprietorship,  or  by  means  of 
feudal  ownership,  or  by  means  of  economic  socialism. 
He  did  say,    You  shall  carry  it  into  effect,  and  pro- 
mised the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  of  life  to  the  Christian 


68        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

fellowship  throughout  the  ages,  which  should  guide 
them  so  long  as  they  were  loyal  to  the  ideals  of  the 
Kingdom  in  the  economic  application  of  those  ideals 
best  suited  to  the  actual  day  and  generation.  The 
letter  of  a  law  divorced  from  its  spirit  and  intention 
killeth ;  the  spirit  or  intention  of  law  gives  it  life ; 
the  intention  of  the  old  law  was  that  none  should 
idle,  that  all  should  be  producers,  that  none  should 
live  by  means  of  tribute  levied  on  the  production  of 
others.  We  should  be  glad  if  our  critics  would  tell 
us  in  what  sense  the  economic  system  of  the  present 
day  is  an  expression  of  the  living  spirit  and  intention 
of  the  law  of  the  Jews,  which  was  not  abrogated,  but 
extended  and  universally  applied,  by  Jesus  Christ. 
It  is  not  necessary  here  to  discuss  the  further  question 
of  whether  Christ  was  an  anarchist  or  a  socialist — that 
is,  as  to  whether  He  was  uncompromisingly  against 
every  kind  of  enforcement  of  law  by  aristocracies, 
plutocracies,  monarchies,  or  democracies, — for  our 
modern  Christian  critics  are  cheating  themselves  or 
us,  and  merely  playing  the  hypocrite,  when  they 
object  to  social  legislation  on  this  particular  ground. 
They  have  no  intention  of  taking  the  bars  and  bolts 
from  their  front  doors,  or  abolishing  the  police  or 
any  of  those  legal  and  compulsory  safeguards  which 
secure  to  them  their  ill-gotten  gains  ;  they  are  merely 
joking  with  us,  and  their  joke  is  in  very  bad  taste. 
The  only  serious  and  consistent  opponent  of  social- 
ism on  the  ground  that  it  involves  compulsion,  and 
that  compulsion  is  intrinsically  antichristian,  is  the 
passive  anarchist  Count  Tolstoy,  who,  although  he 
opposes  legal  socialism,  more  strenuously  opposes 


THE   GOSPELS  69 

the  compulsory  commercial  individualism  (which 
comfortable  middle-class  Christians  complacently 
support)  as  being  the  most  unutterably  unchristian 
thing  the  world  has  ever  seen. 

Now,  Tolstoy's  contention  is  that  any  physical 
expression  of  an  inward  idea  is  unchristian,  or  rather, 
such  physical  expression  as  should  curtail  the  liberty" 
of  others ;  all  government,  therefore,  prisons,  police, 
armies,  physical  resistance  or  compulsion  on  the  part 
of  individuals  or  communities,  is  antichrist.  The 
bomb-thrower  and  the  government  that  hangs  him, 
the  thief  and  his  gaoler,  the  aristocracy  who  have 
stolen  the  land  by  compulsion  and  the  democracy 
who  would  regain  the  land  by  compulsion,  are  equally 
condemned.  Now,  Tolstoy's  criticisms  are  suspect  for 
two  reasons.  First,  he  black-brushes  out  every  in- 
cident in  the  Gospels  which  does  not  square  with  his 
preconceived  notion  of  what  a  Saviour  ought  to  be ; 
he  singles  out  a  couple  of  texts  and  asserts  that  these 
are  the  essentials  of  the  Gospel.  Other  passages 
contradict  his  interpretation  of  that  couple  of  texts ; 
they  are  therefore  interpolations  of  a  later  date. 
Secondly,  his  particular  interpretation  in  this  matter 
contradicts  the  unanimous  interpretation  of  the  un- 
divided Church.  This  does  not  trouble  him,  but  it 
troubles  us,  for  the  Christian  Bible  was  not  written  by 
Christ,  but  by  members  of  His  Church,  and  it  was  the 
Church  that  finally  selected  certain  writings  of  its 
members  and  rejected  others,  and  bound  its  selections 
together  under  one  cover  which  we  call  the  New 
Testament.  If  the  unanimous  interpretation  of  its 
members  be  rejected  with  contempt  as  being  the 


70        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

outcome  of  a  corrupt  and  incapable  body,  why  should 
not  the  action  of  members  of  this  same  corrupt  and 
incapable  body  be  suspect,  when  it  chose  certain 
writings  and  rejected  the  rest?  Why  should  not 
Tolstoy,  and,  indeed,  all  those  modern  interpreters 
who  profess  to  love  the  book  while  they  despise  its 
authors  and  selectors,  go  to  the  rejected  gospels  as 
their  standard  of  what  Christ  really  said,  assured  in 
their  minds  that  whatever  this  degraded  and  apostate 
Church  selects  must  be  false,  and  whatever  it  rejects 
must  be  true  ?  We  cannot,  therefore,  regard  with  any 
great  degree  of  seriousness  a  critic  who  fixes  an 
absolute  gulf  between  the  human  tradition  labelled 
"  Gospels"  and  the  human  tradition  labelled  "  Epistles 
and  Early  Writings,"  and  who  is  quite  capricious  and 
irresponsible  in  his  use  of  the  sacred  text. 

He  isolates  a  single  sentence  from  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount :  "  Resist  not  him  that  is  evil,"  and  inter- 
prets it  as  meaning  that  no  physical  resistance,  force, 
or  compulsion  is  permissible  to  Christian  governments 
or  individuals.  He  can  find  no  passage  which  in  the 
least  modifies  this  conclusion,  and  he  points  in 
triumph  to  a  passage  which  confirms  it :  "  He  that 
takes  the  sword  shall  perish  by  the  sword."  Jesus 
was  the  meek  and  gentle  persuader  of  the  souls  of 
men.  His  Kingdom  would  indeed  have  its  outward 
expression  ;  it  would  involve  a  change  in  material 
conditions  ;  the  rich  would  get  off  the  backs  of  the 
poor ;  there  would  be  a  universal  but  voluntary  com- 
munism, after  the  pattern  of  the  communism  of  the 
first  days  in  Jerusalem.  Probably  the  Kingdom  would 
be  established  very  gradually  by  a  slow  evolution- 


THE   GOSPELS  71 

ary  process;  but  if  the  government  should  imprison 
a  man,  or  even  fine  him,  for  appropriating  a 
piece  of  the  common  land,  it  would  be  equally 
guilty  with  the  individual  who  prevents  monstrous 
cruelty  to  a  child  by  knocking  down  its  tormentor. 
Tolstoy  here  has  fallen  into  the  trap  that  is  laid  for 
all  literalists ;  he  has  ceased  to  be  literal.  For  if  we  are 
to  isolate  this  particular  text  and  interpret  it  literally, 
it  is  equally  hostile  to  passive  and  argumentative 
resistance  as  to  active  and  corporal  resistance.  It 
does  not  say,  "  Resist  the  evil  man  with  your  brain,  but 
do  not  resist  him  with  your  arm  "  ;  it  says,  "  Do  not 
resist  him  at  all."  The  fact  is,  we  must  take  Christ's 
teaching  as  a  whole,  and  from  it  discover  the  intention 
that  underlies  the  whole.  He  found  men  much  too 
eager  to  revenge  private  wrongs.  People  refused  to 
regard  themselves  as  a  holy  family,  but  were  always 
standing  on  their  mean  and  miserable  little  individual 
rights  or  fancied  rights.  He  says  in  effect,  "  Be  more 
generous,  be  in  charity  one  with  the  other,  do  not  be 
suspicious  one  of  the  other ;  be  large-hearted  enough 
to  turn  the  other  cheek  ;  life  is  short  and  the  battle  is 
long,  the  battle  against  mammon  and  his  allies,  the 
battle  for  the  Kingdom  of  God."  Now,  such  an  in- 
terpretation has  not  only  the  advantage  of  being  in 
accord  with  common  sense  and  universal  tradition, 
but  does  not  contradict  the  rest  of  Christ's  teaching, 
for  the  Prince  of  Peace  was  no  peace-at-any-price 
prince.  On  one  occasion  He  uses  physical  violence, 
upsetting  the  tables  of  the  money-changers,  and 
driving  them,  together  with  the  oxen,  out  of  His 
Father's  courts.  His  language  is  not  mild  and  con- 


72        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

ciliatory  like  that  of  Tolstoy,  but  fierce  and  terrible. 
He  calls  His  king  a  fox,  His  disciple  Satan,  the 
religious  leaders  vipers,  hypocrites,  and  whited 
sepulchres.  His  Kingdom  is  for  the  violent ;  men 
of  violence  are  storming  it.  He  comes  to  cast  fire 
upon  the  earth,  and  wishes  it  were  already  ablaze. 
He  brings  not  peace,  but  a  sword  ;  He  divides  families, 
the  father  from  the  son,  the  daughter  from  the  mother. 
John  baptized  with  water,  but  He  with  fire.  His 
Kingdom  will  grind  the  unbeliever  to  powder,  will 
burn  the  tares  with  unquenchable  fire.  It  shall  be 
more  tolerable  for  Sodom  in  the  day  of  judgment 
than  for  the  villages  that  refuse  hospitality  to  His 
followers.  Now,  whatever  may  be  the  interpretation 
of  these  passages,  they  are  simply  irreconcilable  with 
the  picture  of  the  passive  Tolstoyan  Messiah,  and 
they  suggest  an  answer  to  both  the  consistent  and 
inconsistent  moderns  who  claim  Christ  as  a  non- 
resister.  Tolstoy  says  Christ  was  never  angry  ;  St 
Mark  says  Christ  looked  about  Him  with  anger.  The 
fact  is,  the  "  Resist  not  evil "  passage  has  absolutely 
nothing  to  do  with  the  question  of  compulsion.  I 
should  be  opposing  Christ's  teaching  in  that  particular 
passage,  if  I  wrote  a  venomous  attack  on  a  personal 
enemy  in  a  newspaper  as  if  I  ran  him  through  with  a 
sword.  If  Christ  had  said,  "  Do  not  physically  resist 
an  evil  man,"  we  should  have  quite  as  much  right  to 
urge  another  isolated  text :  "  He  that  hath  no  sword, 
let  him  sell  his  garment  and  buy  one,"  but  of  course 
such  playing  with  texts  is  altogether  useless. 

Christ  illustrated  the  nature   of  the   Kingdom  of 
God  by  a  series  of  stories  drawn  from  the  life  and 


THE    GOSPELS  73 

customs  of  His  day.  These  stones  served  the  double 
purpose  of  attracting  and  enticing  those  who  were 
on  the  alert  for  truth,  and  repelling  the  hard-hearted 
and  wooden-minded ;  the  prejudiced  could  make 
nothing  of  them.  The  parables  not  only  brought 
the  people  up  to  the  high-water  mark  of  prophetic 
tradition,  but  increased  and  developed  the  meaning 
of  the  Kingdom.  The  best  that  had  been  done  in 
the  past  had  been  to  conceive  of  a  kingdom  of  the 
Jews  expanding  into  a  just  empire  which  should  rule 
in  righteousness  over  all  the  earth.  The  old  con- 
ception, whether  of  a  little  Palestine  or  an  imperial 
Palestine,  had  always  remained  nationalist ;  now  the 
nationalist  must  give  way  before  an  internationalist 
conception.  Again,  many  thought  the  Kingdom 
would  instantly  appear.  Now,  although  I  cannot 
find  any  justification  of  the  theory  of  a  very  slow 
and  gradual  evolution  of  the  Kingdom  through 
centuries  after  centuries,  and  although  both  parables 
and  apocalypses  and  scattered  sayings  all  seem  to 
point  to  a  sudden  and  cataclysmic  appearance  of  the 
Kingdom,  yet  such  a  consummation  might  not  be 
immediate,  might  be  so  long  delayed  as  to  discourage 
shallow  and  impatient  natures.  Such  a  coming  of 
the  Kingdom  there  would  indeed  be  before  that 
generation  had  passed,  but,  though  abrupt  and  terrible 
and  apparent  to  every  eye,  it  would  only  be  the 
sudden  consummation  and  fulfilment  of  the  old 
familiar  commonwealth  of  the  prophets,  the  coming 
of  a  Kingdom  not  utterly  strange  and  foreign,  but 
of  one  that  had  been  from  the  very  beginning  within 
their  midst.  They  must  not  be  disappointed  by  the 


74        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

apparent  rejection  of  the  Gospel  by  the  world.  The 
growth  of  a  seed  once  sown  is  secret.  It  comes  up 
unexpectedly,  one  knows  not  how.  Once  planted, 
one  must  leave  it  to  nature's  secret  workings.  When 
the  end  comes  it  will  be  as  vivid  and  universal  as 
the  lightning:  be  alert,  lest  it  come  suddenly  as  a 
thief  at  night  and  take  you  unawares ; — How  can  I 
explain  all  this  to  you?  What  illustration  can  I 
use?  The  Son  of  Man  is  like  a  sower.  He  sows 
His  followers  up  and  down  the  field  of  this  age,  but 
the  Evil  One  sows  also  evil  men.  Don't  be  too 
anxious  to  root  up  the  weeds,  when  weeds  and  wheat 
are  both  young.  You  may  mistake  the  one  for  the 
other.  The  age  is  drawing  to  a  close;  the  harvest 
is  its  end,  and  the  Son  of  Man  and  His  angels  will 
come  as  reapers,  rooting  up  from  the  Kingdom  all 
things  and  all  people  that  are  an  offence,  and  casting 
them  into  the  furnace  of  fire.  Then  shall  just  men 
shine  forth  like  the  sun  in  the  Golden  Age.  The 
Gospel  of  the  Kingdom  will  fall  on  all  kinds  of  soil, 
on  deaf  ears  sometimes,  on  shallow  natures  quick  to 
accept  and  quick  to  reject,  upon  people  who  are 
inclined  to  receive  its  ideals,  but  who  are  finally 
choked  with  worldliness  and  over  much  property, 
upon  people  who  cannot  stand  persecution  ;  but  some 
will  understand— their  minds  are  bright,  their  hearts 
alert — and  these  will  be  prolifically  fruitful.  Its  social 
gospel  will  attract  all  kinds  of  people,  the  good  and 
the  bad;  it  is  a  net  gathering  every  kind  of  fish.  It 
is  sown  in  this  little  corner  of  the  world  ;  it  breaks 
national  boundaries  and  becomes  a  tree  whose 
branches  overspread  the  earth.  It  works  secretly 


THE   GOSPELS  75 

and  in  various  ways  in  men's  hearts,  but  it  is  very 
thorough  and  wide-spread,  like  leaven  hidden  in  the 
meal  till  all  is  leavened.  It  is  worth  everything  else 
in  the  world  ;  there  is  nothing  like  it ;  it  is  the  pearl 
beyond  all  price ;  it  is  the  buried  unexpected  treasure 
for  which  one  sells  all  beside.  Seize  upon  the  idea 
of  the  commonwealth,  or  let  yourself  be  seized  and 
fired  by  it,  and  your  dull  existence  will  blaze  up  into 
overmastering  life.  The  past  will  be  lit  up  by  the 
flames  of  the  Kingdom,  the  future  will  be  secure. 

It  is  only  those  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  justice 
who  can  be  filled,  only  those  who  keep  their  lamps 
trimmed  that  will  be  ready  for  its  coming.  The  pity 
of  it  is  that  the  sons  of  this  age,  the  children  of  this 
evil,  competitive,  suspicious  world,  are  in  their  genera- 
tion wiser  than  the  disciples  of  the  Kingdom.  The 
Golden  Age  must  be  carried  by  storm.  If  the  people 
of  this  age,  by  sheer  persistency  in  their  requests, 
draw  from  an  unjust  and  ungenerous  judge  their 
particular  demands,  how  much  more  shall  the 
supporters  of  the  Golden  Era  win  from  the  generous 
Father  of  mankind  that  consummation  of  their  hopes 
which  is  in  accordance  with  His  own  deepest  longings  ! 
But  the  sons  of  mammon  are  more  alert  and  whole- 
hearted in  their  pursuit  of  private  wealth,  than  are 
the  sons  of  the  Kingdom  in  their  pursuit  of  common 
wealth.  Yet  it  is  only  those  who  are  eager  to  hear 
who  shall  hear,  only  those  who  have  learnt  to  be 
hungry  who  can  be  filled.  To  him  that  hath  shall 
be  given,  and  from  him  that  hath  not  shall  be  taken 
away  even  that  which  he  seemeth  to  have.  That  is 
the  law  even  in  the  affairs  of  this  world.  The 


SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Deliverer  seems  a  long  time  coming,  the  Golden  Age 
seems  so  very  far  removed.  Meanwhile,  you  must 
zealously  increase  your  powers  of  service  and  forward 
the  interest  of  that  commonwealth.  The  slaves  of 
the  absent  merchant  prince  understand  that.  To 
one  he  has  given  ten  talents.  By  making  the  best 
use  of  them  according  to  the  code  that  exists  in 
trading  circles  he  doubles  them ;  to  another  he  has 
given  five  talents,  with  a  like  result ;  a  third  is  slack 
and  indolent,  and  does  nothing  with  the  one  talent 
entrusted  to  him.  Suddenly  the  merchant  returns, 
and  the  indolent  slave  excuses  himself  on  the  ground 
that  his  master  is  a  harsh  and  unscrupulous  man  who 
is  quite  ready  to  reap  where  he  has  not  sown,  that  is, 
to  cheat  and  rob.  But,  replies  the  merchant,  if  I 
am  an  unscrupulous  rascal,  you  as  my  slave  were 
bound  to  behave  as  the  loyal  servant  of  an  unscrupulous 
rascal ;  in  other  words,  you  should  have  taken  my 
money  to  the  bank,  so  that  I  should  have  received 
mine  own  along  with  that  interest  which  rascals  do 
not  scruple  to  take.  If  we  are  as  indolent  in  our  use 
of  the  powers  God  gives  us  for  the  advancement  of 
the  commonwealth  as  the  slave  was  indolent  in  serving 
the  merchant  of  mammon,  his  fate  will  be  ours. 

A  manager  is  accused  of  wastefulness.  His 
master  resolves  to  dismiss  him  ;  he  is  compelled  to 
render  his  account,  as  the  steward  of  injustice  or  of 
the  unjust  mammon,  that  is,  of  private  property. 
Sharing  property,  or  making  it  common,  is  called  by 
Jesus  justice:  "Do  not  your  justice  before  men." 
This  manager  finds  himself  in  a  fix  ;  he  is  without 
friends,  he  has  offended  his  master  ;  he  has  probably 


THE   GOSPELS  77 

offended  the  merchants  who  do  business  with  his 
master  by  adding  to  the  amount  of  their  accounts 
an  additional  sum  as  commission  for  himself;  he 
determines  to  put  the  matter  straight  with  them,  so 
that  when  he  is  dismissed,  all  doors  shall  not  be  shut 
against  him ;  he  does  the  smart,  business-like  thing, 
for  which  his  master  commends  him.  Should  we  not 
be  at  least  as  alert — we,  the  children  of  light — on  behalf 
of  the  commonwealth,  as  are  the  children  of  this 
dark  commercial  age  on  behalf  of  mammon  ?  Should 
we  not  be  as  whole-heartedly  communistic  as  the 
commercial  fools  (cf.  Luke  xii.  20)  are  whole- 
heartedly individualistic.  Make  to  yourselves  friends 
by  means  of  the  property  you  unjustly  possess  ;  sell 
that  ye  have  and  give  alms,  so  that,  when  the  system 
of  mammon  shall  be  at  an  end,  the  poor  to  whom 
you  have  given  may  receive  you  into  the  eternal 
tabernacles  of  the  international  Kingdom.  What  is 
appropriate  to  you  is  the  common  property,  in  which 
you  will  have  your  share  in  the  Golden  Age.  Ex- 
cessive private  property  is  not  your  own,  but  belongs 
to  the  poor  from  whom  it  has  been  robbed.  If  you 
have  not  been  faithful  by  distributing  to  those  others 
that  which  is  theirs,  how  can  you  expect  in  the 
Xingdom  to  come  to  receive  that  which  is  your  own  ? 
You  cannot  serve  God  and  greed.  It  is  intensely 
significant  that  there  immediately  follows  this 
comment :  "  The  Pharisees,  who  were  lovers  of 
money,  scoffed  at  him."  As  a  further  comment 
there  is  here  inserted  the  story  of  Dives  and  Lazarus, 
the  story  of  the  rich  man  who  refused  justice  to  the 
poor  man  at  his  door ;  and  very  soon  after  is  related 


78        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  incident  of  the  enormously  rich  young  man,  who 
refused  to  disburse  his  property,  and  the  generous 
rich  man  who  did  the  best  he  could  under  the  system, 
giving  half  his  income  to  the  poor,  and  restoring  four- 
fold when  he  exacted  more  than  his  due.  As  to 
laws  of  private  property  and  squabbles  about  in- 
heritance, Christ  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  them. 
He  will  be  no  party  to  settling  private  disputes 
among  capitalists  :  "  Who  made  me  a  judge  or  divider 
among  you  ?  "  Such  people  must  beware  of  avarice, 
the  desire  of  private  gain  in  contradiction  to  public 
service.  They  must  remember  the  fate  of  the 
successful  farmer,  who  thinks  that  life  consists  in 
an  abundance  of  private  property,  and  who  hoards 
his  gains  in  warehouses.  To  the  man  of  the  world 
he  may  appear  a  clever  fellow  :  God  calls  him  a  fool. 
So  is  he  that  builds  a  private  fortune,  instead  of 
sharing  with  the  poor. 

To  those  Jewish  converts,  who  will  be  inclined  to 
draw  back  when  they  see  what  is  involved  in  the  inter- 
national ideal,  and  who  will  complain  that  they  have 
borne  the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day,  Christ  replies 
that  the  foreigners  were  eager  and  alert  to  work  for 
the  same  ideal,  but  had  no  opportunity,  and  that 
therefore  it  was  right  and  just  that  their  reward 
should  be  the  same  as  that  of  the  Jews ;  for  in  God's 
Kingdom  men  are  to  be  paid,  not  by  results,  but 
according  to  their  needs. 

His  Kingdom  is  not  of  this  world  ;  it  does  not 
belong  to  the  pushing,  bullying,  grasping  spirit  of 
this  epoch ;  if  it  did,  it  might  be  established  by  push- 
ing and  grasping  and  fighting.  It  will  be  established 


THE   GOSPELS  79 

on  earth  as  in  heaven  by  the  conversion  of  the  people 
to  the  ideal  of  common  wealth.  The  life  of  the 
Kingdom  is  to  be  no  mean,  niggardly,  ungenerous 
existence.  It  is  compatible  with  prodigal  generosity. 
The  Christ  who  thundered  against  plutocracy  (Mt. 
vi.  24),  who  urged  the  re-establishment  of  God's  just 
commonwealth,  now  no  longer  on  a  national  but  on 
an  international  basis,  who  absolutely  forbade  private 
fortune  -  building  (Mt.  vi.  19),  having  driven  the 
money-grubbers  out  of  His  Father's  Temple,  is  in 
immediate  peril  of  arrest  and  of  death.  He  foresees 
that  His  opposition  to  the  plutocracy-loving  Pharisees 
and  His  teaching  of  the  inner  laws  of  the  Kingdom 
means  the  end.  His  disciples  are  afraid,  but  they 
cannot  understand  that  He  will  be  defeated  and 
destroyed.  He  dines  in  the  house  of  Simon  the 
Leper.  No  one  seems  to  realise  the  immediate 
danger,  that  in  a  few  short  hours  He  will  be 
snatched  from  them,  and  that  the  Cause  will  be,  as 
they  would  think,  for  ever  lost.  No  one  realised 
the  situation,  excepting  a  woman.  There  came  a 
woman  having  a  very  costly  cruse  of  ointment,  and 
she  brake  the  cruse  and  poured  it  over  His  head 
(Mk.  xiv.  3 ;  so  also  Mt.  xxvi.).  The  ointment  may 
have  been  worth  a  price  which  would  have  kept  an 
artisan's  family  in  comfort  for  a  whole  year.  The 
act  was  lavish,  spontaneous,  immense ;  the  prodigal 
expression  of  a  breaking  heart  that  understood  that 
this  was  the  end  (Mt.  xxvi.  12) ;  those  who  stood  by, 
and  among  them  disciples,  were  honestly  indignant. 
Their  thrifty  peasant  minds  were  staggered  at  such 
abandoned  generosity.  The  thing  was  as  silly  and 


8o        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

as  thoughtless  as  the  folly  of  the  widow  who  cast 
her  mite  into  the  treasury,  abandoning  all  that  she 
had.  The  creed  of  the  Charity  Organisation  Society 
had  its  adherents  then  as  now  ;  but  Jesus  perceives 
their  obtuseness,  and  understands. 

To  their  murmurings  against  the  woman,  "  To 
what  purpose  is  this  waste  of  ointment,  for  it  might 
have  been  sold  and  given  to  the  poor,"  He  replies: 
Let  her  alone ;  why  annoy  her  ?  she  hath  wrought 
a  good  work  on  Me.  You  talk  about  the  poor,  but 
the  poor  are  always  with  you,  and  if  you  really  so 
chose  you  could  at  any  time  do  them  good  ;  but  for 
Me  the  end  is  very  near.  She  hath  done  what  she 
could ;  she  hath  anointed  My  body  aforehand  for 
the  burying,  and  verily  I  say  unto  you,  that  whereso- 
ever this  Gospel  shall  be  preached  throughout  the 
whole  world,  that  also  which  this  woman  hath  done 
shall  be  spoken  of  for  a  memorial  of  her,  In  a  later 
account  of  the  incident,  Judas,  the  treasurer  of  the 
party,  is  the  grumbler,  and  cants  about  the  poor,  not 
because  he  has  any  intention  of  distributing  the 
money  among  them,  but  because  he  is  a  thief  and 
wants  the  money  for  himself. 

In  our  Lord's  picture  of  the  final  judgment  of 
men  it  is  not  individuals  as  individuals,  but  indi- 
viduals as  nations  who  are  arraigned.  There  are  many 
"  religious  "  peoples  who  will  call  Him  "  Lord,  Lord," 
and  whom  He  will  repudiate  as  strangers.  The  last 
shall  be  first,  and  the  first  last.  Coming  in  contact 
with  Him  will  constitute  no  claim  on  His  Kingdom ; 
the  fact  that  one  is  related  to  Him  by  kinship  or 
nationality  is  nothing.  The  fact  that  He  preached 


THE   GOSPELS  81 

in  their  streets  will  increase  their  damnation.  There 
are  many  who  will  claim  to  have  prophesied  in  His 
name,  to  have  been  virtuous  and  orthodox,  to  whom 
He  will  reply,  "  I  was  naked  and  you  did  not  clothe 
Me,  hungry  and  you  did  not  feed  Me,  in  gaol  and 
you  did  not  visit  Me."  These  respectable  claimants 
will  be  shocked  beyond  measure  :  they  have  been 
worshipping  a  gentlemanly  God  on  a  jasper  throne, 
and  forgetting  the  demands  of  the  poor  and  the  out- 
cast and  the  prisoners,  in  the  throne  of  whose  heart 
God  dwells.  To  these  He  says,  "  Depart  from  Me,  ye 
accursed,  into  the  overwhelming  fire  prepared  for  the 
Devil  and  his  angels."  There  will  be  others,  who 
perhaps  have  been  driven  away  from  religion  by  the 
hypocrisy  of  the  unctuous,  or  who  have  never  heard 
His  name,  but  who  have  been  hungering  for  a 
kingdom  of  justice,  and  who  have  been  the  cham- 
pions of  the  desolate  and  the  oppressed,  to  whom 
He  will  say,  "  Come,  ye  blessed  of  My  Father ;  possess 
the  Kingdom  prepared  for  you  from  the  beginning 
of  the  world " ;  so  persistently  does  He  urge  His 
preference  for  those  who  say,  "  I  go  not,"  but  go,  over 
those  who  say,  "  I  go,  sir,"  but  go  not. 

The  Kingdom  prepared  from  the  beginning  of  all 
things  is  the  dream  Kingdom  of  God's  will  and  mind 
— the  Heavenly  Utopia,  which  has  existed  always  as 
God's  dream  for  the  world,  as  the  pattern  after 
which  He  wanted  men  to  live,  as  the  ideal  for 
which  He  brought  them  into  being,  the  heavenly 
city  of  friends  which  they  are  to  grasp  and  appro- 
priate and  drag  down  out  of  the  skies,  planting  it 
firmly  on  this  earth,  fulfilling  it  in  their  commerce, 

6 


82        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

,- 

their  politics,  in  all  their  activities  and  in  every 
human  institution. 

In  such  a  fellowship  alone  could  they  attain  to 
fulness  of  life,  to  that  overmastering  or  overwhelm- 
ing life  which  Christ  promises  to  men  when  they 
shall  have  established  the  Golden  Age.  Even  in 
this  age  they  will  experience  something  of  that  life. 
To  be  filled  with  the  socialistic  ideal,  though  it  mean 
the  breaking  of  old  bonds,  the  division  of  families, 
and  the  uprooting  of  old  friendships,  means  also 
closer  comradeships,  more  living  relationships  with 
persecution,  and  in  the  good  time  coming  over- 
mastering life. 

Already  a  new  vigour  had  come  into  the  lives  of 
His  peasant  followers,  a  new  purpose  into  their 
minds,  a  new  gladness  into  their  eyes.  When  at 
last  their  leader  had  understood  that  Jesus  was 
indeed  the  Deliverer,  whose  mission  was  the  bring- 
ing of  the  Golden  Age,  Christ  begins  the  march 
upon  Jerusalem,  the  city  of  His  final  adventure  and 
His  death.  When  they  are  getting  near  to  that  city 
which  has  slain  the  prophets  and  rejected  God's 
messengers,  a  rich  young  man  comes  running  to 
them  along  the  road.  He  was  probably  a  landed 
proprietor  of  Judaea.  Christ  is  going  before ;  His 
disciples,  a  little  afraid,  follow  after.  The  rich  man 
has  heard  of  the  vigour  of  their  mission  and  the 
wonderful  life  that  has  come  to  them,  and  he  asks 
Jesus  on  what  terms  he  too  may  possess  this  life. 
It  is  significant  that  our  Lord  replies  by  reminding 
him  of  the  social  precepts  of  his  own  religion.  He 
answers  airily  enough,  "  All  these  have  I  kept  from 


THE   GOSPELS  83 

my  youth  up  :  what  lack  I  yet  ?  "  According  to  one 
of  the  early  MSS.,  Jesus  replies  that  he  has  not  kept 
them,  for  the  poor  are  hungry  at  his  doors.  But 
in  any  case,  our  Lord  says,  "  if  thou  wilt  be  perfect, 
go,  sell  what  thou  hast,  give  to  the  poor  ;  follow  Me, 
and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  Heaven."  And  he 
went  away  sorrowful,  because  he  was  enormously 
rich.  Our  Lord  realised  that  the  march  upon 
Jerusalem  was  somehow  necessary  for  the  establish- 
ment of  His  commonwealth,  and  yet  that  it  would 
involve  His  death,  and  that  through  His  death 
would  come  the  ultimate  triumph.  This  adventure 
therefore  involved  the  burning  of  their  boats,  the 
complete  detachment  of  the  soldier  engaged  in  a 
desperate  campaign.  Just  as  there  are  many  who 
are  compelled  by  the  fierce  requirements  of  the 
battle  to  refrain  from  marriage  and  the  cares  of  a 
family,  so  there  are  many  to  whom  property  is 
a  deadly  encumbrance.  Many  agnostics,  as  also 
Christian  commentators,  miss  the  point  of  the 
incident.  Agnostics  often  say,  "  Selling  your  pro- 
perty and  sharing  out  with  the  poor  is  no  solution 
of  the  social  question."  Christ  never  said  it  was. 
He  was  not  solving  the  social  question ;  He  was 
solving  the  question  of  the  rich  man's  soul.  He 
saw  that  this  man  was  being  kept  back  from  the 
life-giving  adventure  of  establishing  God's  Kingdom 
by  the  entanglement  of  great  possessions.  His 
business,  then,  was  to  get  rid  of  them,  to  give  them 
to  the  poor.  Thus  only  would  he  be  free  to  follow 
Christ  and  to  be  a  soldier  of  the  commonwealth. 
And  Christ's  comment  on  all  rich  men  was,  "  How 


84        SOCIALISM  IJN   CHURCH  HISTORY 

hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the 
Kingdom  of  God  !  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  a  rich  man  to 
enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven "  ;  just  as  we 
might  say,  "  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through 
a  needle's  eye,  than  for  a  proud  man  to  enter  into  a 
child's  game  of  marbles."  Some  commentators  have, 
I  believe,  enlarged  the  needle's  eye  to  the  size  of  a 
darning  needle;  others,  in  their  anxiety  to  get  the 
rich  man  through,  assert  that  our  Lord  meant  a  cer- 
tain porch  of  the  Temple  that  went  under  the  name 
of  the  Needle's  Eye.  But  apparently  the  baggage 
camels  of  the  East  could  squeeze  through  that  porch 
on  one  condition  only,  namely,  if  they  unloaded. 

Modern  criticism  seems  conclusively  to  have  proved 
that  the  claim  to  Messiahship  was  not  at  that  time 
considered  to  involve  any  theological  claim  to  Divinity. 
The  idea,  therefore,  that  the  Jews  combined  with  the 
Romans  to  execute  Christ  because  He  asserted  that 
He  was  identical  with  God  is  not  established.  If  one 
has  suffered  much  of  modern  preachers,  one  gets  the 
impression  that  they  regard  Christ  as  merely  a  preacher 
of  the  domestic  virtues.  But  supposing  our  Lord's 
mission  was  merely  domestic,  supposing  He  had 
asserted  with  vehemence  merely  the  duty  of  being 
kind  to  one's  grandmother  or  considerate  to  one's  aunt, 
what  Pharisee  or  scribe  was  there  who  would  not  have 
hailed  Him  as  a  heaven-born  leader?  The  conclu- 
sion is  forced  upon  one  that  the  Pharisees,  who  were 
lovers  of  money,  scoffed  at  His  communistic  ideals, 
which  is  exactly  what  St  Luke  tells  us,  and  that  the 
Sadducees  opposed  His  political  claims,  and  that 


THE  GOSPELS  85 

everybody  came  to  consider  Him  as  a  much  more 
dangerous  and  revolutionary  claimant  to  power  than 
any  of  the  cruder  and  merely  nationalist  rebels  against 
the  Roman  dominion.  He  asserted  at  the  Last 
Supper  among  His  followers,  that  He  would  drink  no  m 
more  of  the  fruit  of  the  vine  until  He  drank  it  in  that 
feast  of  triumph  which  should  so  soon  celebrate  the 
ushering  in  of  His  Kingdom.  The  accusation  at  His 
trial  before  Herod  and  before  Pilate  was  the  political 
accusation  that  He  claimed  to  be  a  King,  who  was  to 
establish  a  Kingdom  not  of  this  world,  but  in  this 
world  :  this  accusation  He  did  not  deny.  Hence  the 
superscription  in  various  languages  over  the  Cross, 
"  This  is  the  King  of  the  Jews." 

Finally,  a  more  serious  objection  is  sometimes 
brought  in  connection  with  the  question  put  to  Christ 
about  the  tribute- money.  It  is  an  objection  not 
against  socialism,  but  against  Christian  people  taking 
part  or  interest  in  any  sort  of  secular  government.  In 
their  eagerness  to  prove  the  socialistic  clergy  wrong, 
our  opponents  land  themselves  in  the  position  of 
anarchists,  i.e.  that  we  have  nothing  to  do  with 
politics,  and  that  things  secular  and  sacred  are  abso- 
lutely divorced.  They  really  prove  too  much,  for  such 
a  position  not  only  condemns  the  whole  work  of  the 
C.S.U.,  but  the  work  of  the  Quakeress,  Elizabeth  Fry, 
of  the  Evangelical  Shaftesburys  and  Wilberforces,  of 
all  statesmen  who  have  believed  that  the  Christian 
Faith  ought  in  some  way  or  other  to  influence  public 
affairs.  Of  course,  by  the  way,  it  would  be  an 
absolute  and  final  condemnation  of  an  Established 
Church. 


86        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Now  the  objection  may  be  valid,  but  it  is  certainly 
rather  stupendous  and  revolutionary,  and  for  their 
sakes  as  well  as  ours  a  careful  examination  is  of 
supreme  importance. 

In  so  far  as  the  people  accepted  the  Messiah,  they 
did  so  because  they  thought  He  would  overturn  the 
Roman  power  and  set  up  an  immediate  nationalist 
kingdom.  The  Pharisees  did  not  trouble  to  under- 
stand exactly  what  He  did  stand  for — but  they  were 
money-lovers  and  scoffed  at  Him,  for  they  perceived 
that  He  did  not  want  to  overthrow  Rome  but  mammon, 
and  to  establish  a  commonwealth  which  would  in- 
clude the  people  they  despised — the  foreigner  and  the 
outcasts.  Very  well,  they  would  set  a  trap  for  Him, 
by  which  He  would  either  lose  favour  with  the  demo- 
cracy by  announcing  the  Tightness  of  the  Roman 
dominion,  or  would  betray  Himself  into  the  hands  of 
the  authorities  by  denying  the  Roman  right  to  levy 
taxes.  They  were  not  earnest  inquirers  on  a  point 
that  really  troubled  them  (Luke  xi.  54).  He  invari- 
ably took  infinite  trouble  with  such  questioners.  But 
the  fool  He  answered  according  to  his  folly :  the  crafty 
according  to  his  craftiness.  As  we  say  now,  He 
proved  a  match  for  them  all.  He  escaped  the  trap 
and  pushed  them  into  it.  To  Him  God's  rights  and 
the  ideals  of  the  Kingdom  were  not  besmirched  by 
paying  taxes  to  the  Romans.  They  were  violated  by 
Jews  or  Romans  who  were  dominated  by  the  com- 
mercial-individualistic spirit  of  mammon. 

As  to  the  right  or  wrong  of  this  subordinate 
question  of  Roman  dominion  that  dominated  their 
thought,  into  that  He  would  not  enter.  They  had 


THE   GOSPELS  87 

really  settled  that  themselves  by  using  the  Roman 
coinage.  There  was  a  saying  among  the  Jews  that  a 
people  had  not  accepted  its  position  as  the  conquered 
until  they  accepted  the  coinage  of  the  conquerors. 
He  slips  out  of  the  net  by  leaving  them  to  settle 
whether  or  no  in  fact  they  did  acknowledge  the 
Roman  dominion.  What  coinage  do  you  in  fact  use  ? 
Let  Me  see.  Bring  Me  a  denarius.  But  it  has 
Caesar's  stamp  on  it.  So  you've  already  settled  the 
question.  You  wanted  to  prove  Me  an  anti-patriot 
before  these  people ;  but  yourselves  according  to  your 
own  story  are  anti-patriots,  Render  therefore  unto 
Caesar  the  things  which  you  by  your  usage  acknow- 
ledge to  be  Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  that 
are  God's. 

What  then  are  these  things  of  God?     What  is  His 
Property?     According   to   our   Lord,  as   interpreted 
by  His  Church,  His  is  "  the  Kingdom,  the  power,  and 
the  glory."     And  therefore,  if  we  would    render   to 
God  the  things  that  are  God's,  we  must  devote  our-  \ 
selves  to  bringing  His  Kingdom  into  men's  hearts,  so    \ 
that  they  may  express  it  in  their  laws  and  lives. 


IV 
THE  EARLY  CHURCH 

The  Church  and  the  Book— The  Church  and  the  Resurrection — Ex- 
pectancy and  Pentecost — The  first  preaching — The  "communistic" 
experiment — Ananias  and  Sapphira — The  Apocalypse  of  St  John — 
Kingdom  and  city — Where  is  the  heavenly  city? — The  meaning 
of  "  in  heaven " — The  Kingdom  coming  with  power — The 
criticism  of  apostates — The  appeal  to  the  Fathers — New  Testament 
interpretation — Economics  and  theology  cannot  be  divorced  — 
Dogma  and  its  political  implications — St  Chrysostom  on  com- 
munism— Justin  Martyr,  The  Didache,  St  Barnabas,  Cyprian, 
The  Shepherd,  St  Clement,  St  Austin,  St  Ambrose,  Ambrosiaster, 
Lactantius,  St  Basil,  St  Zeno,  Clement  of  Alexandria,  St 
Gregory,  Tertullian — The  right  to  live— The  Church  and  the 
manual  labourer — Rich  and  poor  in  the  Epistle  of  St  James- 
Democratic  election— Labour  bishops  and  labour  conferences. 


IV 
THE   EARLY    CHURCH 

"  They  found  themselves  in  these  cities  of  the  Roman  Empire  as  bands 
of  brothers,  and  they  hit  upon  maxims  which  are  now  the  basis  of  the 
hopes  of  social  reformers — such  maxims  as  that  you  must  find  a  man 
work,  and  that  you  must  find  him  wages,  and  you  must  find  him 
resource  and  support  when  he  can  no  longer  work.  The  three  short 
maxims  which  come  out  of  an  early  Christian  book  are  precisely  the 
maxims  that  we  want  to-day  to  revolutionise  our  society  :  '  For  him 
who  can  work,  work  ;  for  him  who  will  not  work,  nothing  ;  for  him 
who  can  no  longer  work,  support.'  Those  are  very  simple  maxims, 
and  they  came  into  their  minds  and  practice  because  they  believed  that 
God  was  their  Father ;  and  so  it  was  they  created  their  social  revolu- 
tion for  their  time.  And,  if  we  will  believe  with  the  same  simplicity  of 
faith  to-day,  we  shall  create  a  like  revolution." — BISHOP  OF  BIRMING- 
HAM (Dr  GORE),  Manchester  Cathedral,  4th  October  1908. 

JESUS  Christ  did  not  bind  writings  together  into  a 
book,  but  men  together  into  a  fellowship.  He  did 
not  say,  "  Upon  this  rock  I  will  build  My  library,"  but, 
"  Upon  this  rock  I  will  build  My  Church."  One  watches 
with  some  curiosity  the  struggles  of  those  critics  who 
would  depreciate  the  Church  at  the  expense  of  its 
literature,  the  Bible,  to  prove  this  particular  passage 
unauthentic ;  but  it  is  at  least  as  integral  a  part  of  the 
sacred  text  as  the  passage  in  which  they  profess  to 
find  the  kernel  of  the  Christian  religion,  namely,  "  The 
Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you."  It  is  now  generally 

91 


92        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

admitted  that  this  particular  saying  should  be  more 
accurately  translated,  "  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  among 
you."  But  even  if  these  critics  were  able  to  rid  them- 
selves of  the  saying  they  consider  objectionable,  it 
would  still  remain  unquestionably  true  that  Jesus 
Christ  gathered  round  Him  a  band  of  followers  and 
trained  them  in  the  principles  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God,  so  that  they  might  become  the  mouthpiece  of 
that  Kingdom  throughout  the  civilised  world. 

In  the  time  of  His  defeat  and  crucifixion  as  a 
malefactor,  we  find  them  broken,  defeated,  and 
scattered.  All  His  promises  had  failed.  The  King- 
dom is  at  an  end.  In  an  incredibly  short  time  these 
same  men  and  women  are  together  in  Jerusalem, 
filled  with  quiet  yet  exultant  expectancy,  welded 
together  in  the  certainty  that  the  Messiah  had  risen, 
had  broken  the  bonds  of  death,  had  been  among  them 
and  spoken  to  them,  and  had  at  last  ascended  into 
God's  presence  and  power,  that  He  might  more  effectu- 
ally fill  all  things  with  His  presence,  and  inspire  the 
disciples  of  the  Kingdom  with  a  life  and  enthusiasm 
which,  in  their  terrific  force,  could  not  be  compared 
with  water,  but  with  storm  and  fire. 

They  elect  a  disciple  in  the  place  of  Judas  to  be 
one  of  the  twelve  leaders  of  the  democratic  band. 
For  the  rest,  they  continue  in  prayer  and  alert 
expectancy.  Suddenly  they  are  filled  with  a  spirit 
like  the  rushing  of  a  mighty  wind,  or  like  tongues  of 
flame,  which  drives  them  to  speak  to  the  multitudes. 
There  were  dwelling  at  Jerusalem  Jews  of  the  disper- 
sion from  every  nation  under  heaven,  who  were 
amazed  because  every  one  of  them  understood  that 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  93 

which  was  spoken  as  if  it  had  been  given  in  the 
language  of  his  own  country.  Some  were  greatly 
impressed ;  others,  laughing,  charged  them  with 
drunkenness  ;  but  Peter — that  same  Peter  who  had 
denied  Christ,  the  once  narrow  nationalist  peasant, 
the  now  internationalist  apostle  by  the  power  of 
the  revolutionary  Spirit — implored  them  to  give  ear 
unto  their  words,  saying,  "  This  is  that  which  hath  been 
spoken  by  the  prophet  Joel." 

And  it  shall  come  to  pass  in  the  last  days,  saith  God, 
I  will  pour  out  of  my  Spirit  upon  all  flesh :  and  your  sons 
and  your  daughters  shall  prophesy,  and  your  young  men 
shall  see  visions,  and  your  old  men  shall  dream  dreams : 
and  on  my  servants  and  on  my  handmaidens  I  will  pour 
out  in  those  days  of  my  Spirit ;  and  they  shall  prophesy : 
and  I  will  shew  wonders  in  heaven  above,  and  signs  in  the 
earth  beneath ;  blood,  and  fire,  and  vapour  of  smoke :  the 
sun  shall  be  turned  into  darkness,  and  the  moon  into  blood, 
before  that  great  and  notable  day  of  the  Lord  come :  and 
it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  whosoever  shall  call  on  the  name 
of  the  Lord  shall  be  saved. 

Jesus  of  Nazareth,  whom  they,  by  the  hand  of 
lawless  men,  did  crucify  and  slay,  God  hath  raised  up, 
having  loosed  the  pangs  of  death,  because  it  was  not 
possible  that  He  should  be  holden  of  it.  Let  all  the 
House  of  Israel  therefore  know  assuredly  that  God 
hath  made  Him  both  Lord  and  Messiah  of  the 
Kingdom,  this  Jesus  whom  ye  crucified. 

They  were  pricked  to  the  heart,  and  demanded 
what  they  should  do.  They  were  to  turn  and  be 
baptized  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  unto  the  remis- 
sion of  their  sins,  so  that  they  might  receive  this 
wonderful  spirit  which  animated  the  sons  of  the 
Kingdom.  For  to  you  is  the  promise,  and  to  your 


94        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

children,  and  to  all  that  are  afar  off.  They  were 
exhorted  to  save  themselves  from  this  crooked 
generation.  About  three  thousand  were  convinced, 
and  these  continued  steadfastly  in  this  teaching  and 
in  fellowship,  and  in  the  breaking  of  the  bread,  and  in 
the  prayers.  The  method  of  their  salvation  from 
that  crooked,  commercial,  unbrotherly  age,  is  now 
given  in  detail : — 

Then  they  that  gladly  received  his  word  were  baptized : 
and  the  same  day  there  were  added  unto  them  about  three 
thousand  souls.  And  they  continued  stedfastly  in  the 
apostles'  doctrine  and  fellowship,  and  in  breaking  of  bread, 
and  in  prayers.  And  fear  came  upon  every  soul :  and 
many  wonders  and  signs  were  done  by  the  apostles.  And 
all  that  believed  were  together,  and  had  all  things  common ; 
And  sold  their  possessions  and  goods,  and  parted  them  to 
all  men,  as  every  man  had  need.  And  they,  continuing 
daily  with  one  accord  in  the  temple,  and  breaking  bread 
from  house  to  house,  did  eat  their  meat  with  gladness  and 
singleness  of  heart,  praising  God,  and  having  favour  with 
all  the  people.  And  the  Lord  added  to  the  church  daily 
such  as  should  be  saved. 

At  the  end  of  Acts  iv.  occurs  another  description 
of  their  life  : — 

And  the  multitude  of  them  that  believed  were  of  one 
heart  and  of  one  soul :  neither  said  any  of  them  that  ought 
of  the  things  which  he  possessed  was  his  own ;  but  they 
had  all  things  common.  And  with  great  power  gave  the 
apostles  witness  of  the  resurrection  of  the  Lord  Jesus  :  and 
great  grace  was  upon  them  all.  Neither  was  there  any 
among  them  that  lacked :  for  as  many  as  were  possessors 
of  lands  or  houses  sold  them,  and  brought  the  prices  of  the 
things  that  were  sold,  and  laid  them  down  at  the  apostles' 
feet :  and  distribution  was  made  unto  every  man  according 
as  he  had  need.  And  Joses,  who  by  the  apostles  was  sur- 
named  Barnabas  (which  is,  being  interpreted,  The  son  of 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  95 

consolation),  a  Levite,  and  of  the  country  of  Cyprus,  having 
land,  sold  it,  and  brought  the  money,  and  laid  it  at  the 
apostles'  feet. 

This  communistic  expression  of  their  faith  in  the 
Kingdom  was  voluntary  and  spontaneous.  A  man 
and  his  wife  sold  a  certain  property  and  kept  back 
part  of  the  price,  bringing  only  a  certain  part  and 
laying  it  at  the  Apostles'  feet.  These  people  had 
pretended  to  be  whole-hearted  disciples  of  the 
Kingdom  and  the  fellowship.  They  wished  to  have 
the  credit  of  that  assumption ;  but  this  half-hearted 
service,  this  niggardly  keeping  back  part  of  the  price, 
was  considered  by  Peter  to  be  a  Satanic  cheating  of 
the  spirit  of  brotherhood.  No  compulsion  had  been 
brought  to  bear.  They  could  have  sold  the  land  for 
their  own  purposes.  They  need  never  have  joined 
the  fellowship,  nor  pretended  to  care  about  the 
Kingdom.  They  had  lied,  not  unto  men,  but  unto 
God.  It  is  said  that  their  death  followed  so  immedi- 
ately on  this  rebuke  that  it  was  regarded  as  a  judg- 
ment on  this  niggardly  deceit. 

In  an  early  writing,  known  as  the  Revelation  of 
St  John,  and  so  highly  esteemed  by  the  Church  as 
to  find  a  place  in  the  sacred  Canon,  the  author  sees 
God's  dream  of  fellowship  taking  flesh  and  being 
realised  upon  the  earth.  This  swift  triumph  of  God's 
commonwealth,  superseding  the  kingdoms  of  this 
world,  and  especially  the  Empire  of  Rome,  which  he 
attacks  with  bitterness,  is  his  great  hope  in  the  midst 
of  a  corrupt  age. 

The  symbol  for  this  commonwealth  changes  from 
family  and  kingdom  to  one  of  citizenship,  for  soon  we 


96        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

find  ourselves  on  Greek  soil  and  among  Greek  ideals. 
To  Ephesian  citizens  St  Paul  writes,  "  Fellow  citizens 
with  the  saints,"  and  again,  "  I  have  lived  the  life  of 
a  citizen  " ;  and  again  to  the  Philippians,  "  Behave  as 
citizens  ";  and  from  his  prison  in  Rome,  "  Our  citizen- 
ship is  in  Heaven,  from  whence  also  we  expect  a 
Deliverer."  This  passage,  of  course,  can  no  more  be 
interpreted,  "  Our  citizenship  lies  in  a  land  beyond  the 
grave,"  than  can  the  passages  concerning  the  Kingdom 
be  referred  to  such  a  land.  The  City  in  Heaven,  or 
the  Kingdom  in  Heaven,  will  be  actualised  when  God's 
will  is  done  on  earth  as  in  Heaven. 

To  say  a  polity  is  "in  Heaven"  is  to  assert  its 
inviolability,  its  eternity,  its  assured  victory  on  the 
outward  stage  of  practical  affairs,  because  it  is  no 
arbitrary,  irresponsible,  artificial  commonwealth,  but 
the  inner  spiritual,  unconquerable  citizenship  of  the 
heavens.  So  St  Paul,  the  prisoner,  could  afford  to 
wait,  for  "  our  citizenship  is  celestial "  and  therefore 
assured.  Rooted  in  eternal  realities,  in  the  innermost 
constitution  of  the  world,  it  must  some  day  blossom 
in  the  visible  cities  of  the  earth.  In  Babylon  we  are 
truly  "captives  and  pilgrims,  led  astray  by  sin  and 
concupiscence."  We  are  "  to  shake  off  this  yoke,  to 
find  in  Jerusalem  and  in  the  city  of  our  God  true 
liberty  and  a  house  of  sanctuary  not  made  with 
hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens." l  But  when  men  have 
entered  into  this  city  with  foundations  whose  Builder 
is  God,  it  comes  down  from  Heaven  and  is  builded 
upon  the  earth. 

It  is  when  we  realise  this  burning  enthusiasm  for 

1  Bossuet,  Sermons. 


fellowsr. 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  97 


fellowship,  for  what  St  Jude  calls  "the  common 
salvation,"  expressing  itself  in  such  communistic 
experiments  as  these,  that  we  begin  to  understand 
the  CJhrist's  assurance  :  "  Verily  there  be  some  of  you 
standing  here  which  shall  not  taste  of  death  until 
they  see  the  Kingdom  of  God  come  with  power."  The 
writer  of  the  Revelation  had  seen  his  fellow-disciples 
stretch  up  their  hands  to  the  heavenly  Utopia  and 
grasp  it  firmly,  and  bring  it  down  with  power  into 
human  institutions. 

Modern  commentators  have  exercised  every  in- 
genuity in  attempting  to  prove  that  this  experiment 
at  Jerusalem  was  not  only  an  absolute  failure,  but 
a  quite  exceptional  and  isolated  adventure,  having 
no  integral  connection  whatever  with  the  Christian 
religion.  These  men  hate  all  such  practical  ex- 
pressions of  the  Kingdom.  A  sound  rule  of  criticism 
is  to  inquire,  in  the  case  of  the  moderns,  where  and 
how  they  live,  what  club  they  belong  to,  and  what 
are  their  everyday  political  ideals.  Apostates  do 
not  make  particularly  sound  critics  of  the  religion  of 
Jesus  Christ.  Men  of  great  learning,  who  stand 
outside  the  Church  of  Christ  and  who  have  no 
ecclesiastical  axe  to  grind,  are  in  no  doubt  about 
the  communistic  tendency  of  Christendom.  For 
instance,  the  late  Henry  Sidgwick,  himself  an 
agnostic  and  an  anti-socialist,  was  convinced  that  the 
Church  has  all  along  preached  a  gospel  which  is  most 
becomingly  translated  into  communism ;  and  it  is 
difficult  to  see  the  point  of  those  early  attacks 
on  Christ's  religion  by  Lucian,  and  other  pagan 
opponents,  on  the  ground  that  His  followers  were 

7 


98        SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

for  the  most  part  artisans,  who  lived  together  in 
common,  and  the  jeers  of  these  same  critics  against 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  equality,  if  there  had  been 
no  such  doctrine,  and  no  such  tendency  to  com- 
munism. 

Our  curiosity  becomes  amazement  when  the  modern 
anti-socialist  critic  turns  out  to  be  a  High  Church- 
man, who  is  continually  appealing  to  tradition  on 
questions  of  scents  and  vestments,  and  on  every  kind 
of  doctrinal  issue.  He  has  appealed  to  the  Fathers — to 
the  Fathers  he  shall  go.  As  an  Anglican  he  is  bound 
to  make  this  appeal,  for  the  Church  of  England  lays 
down  not  the  Bible  and  the  Bible  only  as  our 
guide,  but  the  Bible  as  interpreted  by  universal 
consent  of  the  Church.  And  surely  this  position 
is  incontrovertibly  right,  for  the  New  Testament 
is  so  truly  the  offspring  of  the  Church  that  we  may 
say,  "  No  Church,  no  Bible."  The  "  Bible  only  "  was 
certainly  not  the  religion  of  the  Christians  of  the 
first  two  hundred  years,  for  the  New  Testament,  as 
we  now  have  it,  was  not  in  existence.  The  good 
news  about  the  Kingdom  and  its  King  had,  from  the 
first,  been  given  verbally  by  members  of  the  fellow- 
ship which  the  Messiah  had  founded.  It  was  only  as 
an  after-thought  that  certain  members  began  to 
make  jottings  of  the  more  salient  points  in  the 
teaching  of  the  Apostles.  These  notes  and  jottings, 
which  came  to  be  known  as  gospels,  were  very 
numerous.  They  were  not  written  to  convert  any- 
body ;  they  were  written  to  refresh  the  memories  of 
men  and  women  already  converted  by  the  oral 
teaching  of  the  Church.  Composed  by  members  of 


the  Fell 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  99 


the  Fellowship  from  the  teaching  of  other  members 
of  the  Fellowship,  and  finally  revised  and  selected  by 
the  Fellowship  itself,  they,  together  with  a  few  letters 
and  one  or  two  other  writings,  at  last  become  the 
Christian  Bible.  Meanwhile,  the  Church  had  been 
using  the  Jewish  Bible,  along  with  its  verbal  teaching, 
to  explain  to  its  hearers  the  nature  of  the  Kingdom  it 
proclaimed.  The  significance  of  this  fact  will  be 
appreciated  by  those  who  have  studied  my  second 
chapter. 

Now,  if  the  Church  is  the  author  of  the  Christian 
Bible,  it  is  surely  reasonable  to  appeal  to  the  Church 
for  interpretation  of  doubtful  passages.  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  remind  my  readers  that  I  do  not  mean 
by  the  Church  this  or  that  individual  clergyman  or 
layman,  but  the  universally  acknowledged  leaders  and 
saints  and  doctors  of  theology  and  morality.  A  list 
of  these  authorities  is  given  us  in  the  English  Calendar 
of  Saints  at  the  beginning  of  the  Prayer  Book.  We 
are  not  bound  to  accept  the  fanciful  interpretation  of 
this  or  that  early  Father,  where  it  is  individual  and 
out  of  harmony  with  the  rest ;  but  where  we  have  a 
practically  universal  consent  among  those  whom  the 
Church  delights  to  honour  as  wise  and  heroic  men, 
and  especially  in  that  period  when  Christendom  was 
undivided  and  Christians  had  not  broken  up  into 
enfeebled  and  warring  schisms,  more  busily  engaged 
in  fighting  each  other  than  in  destroying  the  kingdom 
of  mammon,  there  probably  is  to  be  found  the  truth. 

It  is  sometimes  objected  that  it  is  ridiculous  to 
appeal  to  the  saints  and  doctors  of  the  Church  on 
ethical  or  economic  matters.  In  that  case  it  is 


ioo      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

difficult  to  see  why  they  should  be  considered  such 
final  authorities  on  the  shape  of  ecclesiastical  clothes. 
But  in  fact  this  argument  arises  from  that  heretical 
type  of  mind  that  divorces  doctrine  from  practice, 
theology  from  ethics,  in  a  way  which  would  have 
staggered  the  orthodox  Fathers.  The  Creed -makers 
were  no  mere  theorists.  They  valued  dogma  as  a 
talisman  of  life ;  doctrines  were  immediately  translat- 
able into  individual  and  political  action.  For  instance, 
the  heretics  who  asserted  the  divinity  of  Christ  denied 
His  humanity,  for  they  held  man  to  be  essentially 
vile,  and  without  dignity  or  divinity.  But  the  Church 
pronounced  man,  in  spite  of  original  sin,  to  be 
essentially  good ;  human  nature,  though  marred  and 
distorted,  was  at  heart  sound  :  so  argued  the  great 
St  Athanasius  and  St  Hilary,  and  their  reasoning  was 
endorsed  by  the  Church  and  elevated  into  a  dogma. 
In  consequence  of  this  dogma,  common  men  were 
heartened  to  claim  their  privileges  as  a  divine  demo- 
cracy. If  the  bodily  appetites  of  man  were  not  the  vile 
things  that  Oriental  Buddhists,  Tertullianists,and  other 
heretics  asserted  them  to  be ;  if  they  were  so  capable 
of  purification  as  to  be  the  perpetual  channels  for 
man's  expression — for  this  is  what  the  dogma  of  the 
resurrection  of  the  body  means, — then  it  followed 
that  justice,  in  apportioning  material  necessities  in 
accordance  with  even  the  meanest  of  man's  bodily 
requirements,  was  an  essential  element  in  the  new 
religion.  While  brilliant  philosophers  of  the  Church 
were  contending  for  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
because  they  saw  in  it  the  highest  unity  the  human 
mind  is  able  to  perceive — not  the  Arian  meagre, 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  101 

isolated  unit  of  the  single  note,  but  the  rich,  collected 
unity  of  the  chord, — the  people  at  the  forge,  in  the 
factory,  and  in  the  market-place  were  contending 
violently  for  the  same  doctrine,  with  more  material 
weapons.  For  somehow  or  other  they  perceived  that 
the  Arian  dogma  of  God  as  solitary,  unsympathetic 
tyrant  in  a  far-off  Heaven,  who  could  not  or  would 
not  bridge  the  gulf  between  God  and  man,  worked 
out  quite  immediately  and  quite  practically  in  the 
political  dogma  of  a  solitary  and  unsympathetic 
tyrant  here  on  earth,  known  to  that  period  as  the 
Emperor  of  Rome,  who  would  ruthlessly  crush  a 
common  man  and  his  social-democratic  aspirations. 
But  if  we  children  of  men  were  the  offspring  and 
expression  of  a  power  in  the  heavens,  Whose  being 
was  best  expressed  by  collective  unity,  that  particular 
theological  belief  expressed  itself  quite  immediately 
and  quite  practically  in  social-democratic  ideas  of 
government  among  the  Catholic  artisans  of  that  time. 
The  Arians  were  imperialists ;  the  orthodox  Christians 
were  the  democratic  party. 

To  argue,  therefore,  that  early  Church  opinion  is 
of  weight  in  matters  of  theology,  and  worthless  in 
matters  of  economics,  is  to  misunderstand  entirely 
the  orthodox  Christian  religion,  and  to  put  asunder 
what  God  hath  joined  together.  Such  argument, 
tracked  down  to  its  source,  involves  a  denial  of  God's 
incarnation.  An  essayist  who  speaks  of  this  early 
period  says: — 

Where  the  Catholic  faith  is  merely  latent,  there  the 
socialism  is  also  less  explicit.  When  the  writer  is  unsound 
in  his  orthodoxy,  then  he  is  almost  sure  to  favour  some  form 


102      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

of  individualist  law  or  possession.  When  the  writer  is  sound 
and  saintly,  then  he  is  always  entirely  and  unhesitatingly  in 
favour  of  the  common  holding  of  goods,  of  equality  of 
opportunity,  of  social  freedom;  and  even  when  he  is  not 
quite  sound,  he  is  always  fiercely  opposed  to  the  covetous- 
ness  which  calls  itself  enterprise,  smartness,  natural  incentive 
to  exertion,  thrift,  and  the  like.1 

It  is  essential  that  the  Church  of  to-day  should 
rediscover  the  sacramental  faith  in  life,  namely,  that 
inward  and  outward  are  alike  necessary,  that  the 
true  Catholic  is  neither  a  mere  materialist  nor  a  mere 
spiritualist,  but  is  frankly  spiritualist  and  frankly 
materialist ;  that  true  spiritual  conceptions  will 
express  themselves  immediately  in  political  and 
economic  conditions;  that  political  and  economic 
conditions  are  the  reflection  of  spiritual  and  mental 
conceptions.  If  political  theories  are  to  be  true  and 
political  life  clean,  these  must  be  the  outcome  of  true 
and  living  dogmas  held  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
the  people,  for  "  the  people  who  have  made  the  great 
revolution  in  human  life  are  the  people  who  have 
taken  their  purchase  for  reforming  human  life  from 
some  high  region  outside  it.  If  all  you  have  to  do 
is  to  establish  a  business,  it  may  be  that  you  can 
establish  that  business  by  thinking  about  nothing 
else.  But,  if  what  you  have  to  do  is  to  reform 
human  life,  then  you  must  take  your  purchase  for  so 
big  a  thing  out  of  the  consideration  of  nothing  else 
than  the  character  of  God  who  made  it."  2 

What,  then,  is  the  state  of  the  evidence  as  regards 

1  Charles  Marson,  Essay  in  The  Voice  of  the  People,  p.  204  (Innes, 
1894). 

2  Dr  Gore,  Bishop  of  Birmingham  ;  Sermon,  Manchester  Cathedral, 
October  1908. 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  103 

the  Church's  belief  that  the  establishment  of  God's 
Kingdom  on  earth  will  necessarily  express  itself  in 
common  ownership  of  the  essential  means  of  life. 
The  attempt  at  Jerusalem  was  not  accidental  but 
essential.  "  The  communism  attempted  in  the 
apostolic  age  was  cherished  in  the  traditions  of 
the  early  and  mediaeval  Church  as  the  ideal  form 
of  Christian  society." l  The  Patristic  writers  do  not 
consider  it  a  failure;  for  instance,  in  his  eleventh 
sermon  on  the  Acts,  St  Chrysostom  points  out  that 
private  bounty  tends  to  vainglory,  but  the  early 
Christians  gave  in  their  corporate  capacity,  commun- 
ising  everything,  and  it  was  for  this  reason  that  they 
had  great  grace.  He  thunders  against  social  in- 
equalities. He  points  out  how  all  could  be  made 
rich  by  renunciation  of  private  property.  He  sketches 
the  effects  of  the  apostolic  communism  applied  to 
his  own  city ;  urges  that  if  it  were  possible  when  the 
leaders  were  few,  much  more  is  it  possible  now. 
Lucian  the  satirist  describes  the  Christians  as  a 
people  whose  first  law-giver  had  persuaded  them  that 
they  should  all  be  brothers  of  one  another,  and  hold 
such  property  as  they  have  got  in  common.2 

Justin  Martyr  says  that  Christians  brought  what 
they  possessed  into  a  common  stock  and  shared  with 
everyone  in  need. 

Thou  shalt  not  turn  away  from  him  that  hath  need,  but 
shalt  share  all  things  with  thy  brother,  and  shalt  not  say 
that  they  are  thine  own.3 

1  Sidgwick,  History  of  Ethics. 

2  Cf.  Marson's  articles  in  Vox  Clamantium  and  The  New  Party. 

3  Teaching  of  the  Twelve,  iv.  8  ;  cf.  Ep.  of  Barnabas. 


io4      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Such  conduct  is  that  of  the  true  sons  and  imitators  of 
God ;  God's  gifts  are  given  to  all  mankind,  the  day  en- 
lightens all,  the  sun  shines  upon  all,  the  rain  falls  and  the 
wind  blows  upon  all.  To  all  men  comes  sleep,  the  splendour 
of  the  stars  and  the  moon  are  common  to  all.  Man  is 
truly  imitator  of  God  when  he  follows  the  common  benefi- 
cence of  God  by  imparting  to  all  the  brotherhood  the  good 
things  which  he  possesses.1 

The  second-century  Shepherd  of  Hermas  compares 
the  rich  to  round  pebbles  which  cannot  be  fitted  into 
the  building  of  God's  Temple,  until  they  are  brought 
to  a  more  convenient  shape  by  paring  them  of  their 
superfluous  possessions. 

The  use  of  all  that  is  in  the  world  ought  to  be  common 
to  all  men.  But  by  injustice  one  man  has  called  this  his 
own,  another  that,  and  thus  has  come  division  among 
mortals.2 

What  injustice  is  there  in  my  diligently  preserving  my 
own,  so  long  as  I  do  not  invade  the  property  of  another  ? 
Shameless  saying  !  My  own,  sayest  thou  ?  What  is  it,  and 
from  what  secret  places  hast  thou  brought  it  into  the  world  ? 
When  thou  enteredst  into  the  light,  when  thou  earnest  from 
thy  mother's  womb,  what  wealth  didst  thou  bring  with  thee  ? 
.  .  .  That  which  is  taken  by  thee,  beyond  what  would 
suffice  to  thee,  is  taken  by  violence.  Is  it  that  God  is 
unjust  in  not  distributing  to  us  the  means  of  life  equally,  so 
that  thou  shouldst  have  abundance  while  others  are  in 
want  ?  Or  is  it  not  rather  that  He  wished  to  confer  upon 
thee  marks  of  His  kindness,  while  He  crowned  thy  fellow 
with  the  virtue  of  patience.  Thou,  then,  who  hast  received 
the  gift  of  God,  thinkest  thou  committest  no  injustice  by 
keeping  to  thyself  alone  what  would  be  the  means  of  life  to 
many  ?  ...  It  is  the  bread  of  the  hungry  thou  keepest,  it 

1  Cyprian,  in  the  third  century,  commenting  on  the  communism  of 
the  Acts. 

2  St  Clement,  quoted  in  Ashley's  Economic  History ',  bk.  i.,  cf.  pp.  1-8. 
Probably  the  epistle  is  spurious  and  belongs  to  the  ninth  century,  but 
it  voices  the  usual  view  of  medievalists. 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  105 

is  the  clothing  of  the  naked  thou  lockest  up ;  the  money 
thou  buriest  is  the  redemption  of  the  wretched.1 

St  Augustine  insists  that  property  is  only  a  creation 
of  man-made  laws :  "  Take  away  the  laws  of  the 
Emperor,  and  who  can  dare  say,  This  is  my  villa,  or 
This  is  my  slave,  or  This  is  my  house  ?  "  2  He  admits 
certain  rights  of  private  property,  but  argues  that 
property  is  either  an  institution  of  the  Divine  or 
the  human  law.  If  the  first,  then  all  is  in  God's 
hands,  and  cannot  belong  to  people  who  use  it 
unjustly  ;  for,  he  says,  the  earth  is  the  Lord's  and  its 
fulness,  and  all  things  belong  to  the  just ;  but  if  it  is 
created  by  merely  government  law, 

What  human  law  has  given, 
Human  law  can  take  away. 

"  God  gives  all  things  in  common  to  all  men,"  says 
Ambrosiaster.  He  therefore  argues  that  almsgiving 
is  the  merest  justice. 

Lactantius,  who  is  constantly  quoted  as  an  authority 
in  our  English  Church  homilies,  traces  minutely  the 
rise  of  human  society  from  the  early  simplicity  of 
semi-communism,  which  he  contrasts  with  a  frenzied 
avarice  which  snaps  up  everything  as  its  own.  Justice 
is  ousted  by  rapacity ;  community  of  life  is  lost,  and 
the  tie  of  human  society  is  unbound.  Not  only  folk 
gave  no  share  to  others  of  their  own  abundance,  but 
robbed  others,  making  private  plunder  of  everything. 
What  at  one  time  had  been  for  the  use  of  all  men, 
was  now  consigned  to  the  houses  of  the  few.  To 
enslave  others,  they  made  a  point  of  mastering  and 

1  St  Ambrose  ;  Ashley's  Economic  History r,  bk.  i.  pp.  126  and  127. 

2  St  Austin,  Sixth  Tract,  John  i. 


106      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

collecting  the  necessaries  of  life,  keeping  them 
thoroughly  in  their  clutches.  Under  the  name  of 
justice  they  sanctioned  the  most  unjust  of  laws,  to 
protect  their  own  greed  against  the  violence  of  the 
many.  They  got  the  upper  hand  by  authority,  by 
wealth,  by  stealth.  Honours  were  now  invented,  and 
state  uniforms  and  high  positions  to  frighten  people 
with  swords  and  halters,  and  to  give  some  show  of 
lordly  right  to  an  obedience  exacted  from  the  stricken 
and  the  terrorised.  But  this  golden  age  of  simplicity 
had  come  back  to  us  as  a  sacrament  and  earnest 
in  Christ. 

St  Basil  answers  the  question  about  what  is  one's 
own  in  the  same  way  as  St  Ambrose,  adding : — 

If  some  person  were  to  take  possession  of  one  of  the 
seats  in  the  State  Theatre,  and  thenceforth  turn  out  all  who 
went  into  it,  deciding  that  what  has  been  provided  for  the 
common  use  of  the  public  was  his  private  property,  that 
would  be  exactly  like  that  which  the  rich  people  do.  They 
claim  prior  possession  of  the  common  property,  and  make 
it  private  by  anticipation.1 

While  we  try  to  amass  wealth,  make  piles  of  money,  get 
hold  of  the  land  as  our  real  property,  overtop  one  another 
in  riches,  we  have  palpably  cast  off  justice,  and  lost 
benefidam  communcm,  social  righteousness.  I  should  like 
to  know  how  any  man  can  be  just,  who  is  deliberately 
aiming  to  get  out  of  someone  else  what  he  wants  for 
himself.2 

St  Zeno  of  Verona,  late  in  the  fourth  century,  is 
communistic  in  the  extreme  in  commenting  on  the 
experiment  in  Acts. 

These  are  merely  examples  of  the  universal  theory 
of  the  first  centuries,  summed  up  in  the  seventh 

i  and  2  Translated  by  Charles  Mar  son,  ibid. 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  107 

century  by  St  Isidore  of  Seville,  when  he  says,  "  By 
natural  law  all  things  are  common." 

"  Thou  shalt  have  all  things  in  common  with  thy 
neighbour,  and  not  call  them  thy  private  property,  for 
if  ye  hold  the  imperishable  things  in  common,  how 
much  more  the  perishable  ?  "  l 

St  Ambrose,  commenting  on  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  speaks  thus  of  the  birds : — 

They  are  a  great  example  truly,  and  one  worthy  of  our 
faithful  imitation,  for  if  God's  Providence  never  fails  to 
supply  the  fowls  of  Heaven,  albeit  they  use  no  husbandry, 
and  trouble  nothing  about  the  prospects  of  the  harvest,  the 
true  cause  of  our  want  would  seem  to  be  avarice.  It  is  for 
this  reason  that  they  have  an  abundance  of  suitable  food, 
because  they  have  not  learnt  to  claim  as  their  private  and 
peculiar  property  the  fruits  of  the  earth  which  have  been 
given  to  them  in  common  for  their  food.  We  have  lost 
common  property  by  the  claims  of  private  property.2 

How  far  will  your  mad  lusts  take  you,  ye  rich  people, 
till  you  dwell  alone  upon  the  earth  ?  Why  do  you  at  once 
turn  nature  out  of  doors,  and  claim  the  possession  of  her 
for  your  own  selves  ?  The  land  was  made  for  all :  why  do 
you  rich  men  claim  it  as  your  private  property?  Nature 
knows  nothing  of  rich  men ;  she  bore  us  all  poor.3 

Nature  lavished  all  things  for  all  in  common,  so  like- 
wise God  made  all  things  to  be  produced,  that  all  should 
have  common  pasture,  and  the  land  should  be  a  kind  of 
property  common  to  all  men. 

Nature  then  produced  common  property. 

Robbery  (usurpatio)  made  private  property.4 

St  Gregory  the  Great,  the  chief  instrument  in  the 
conversion  of  England,  in  his  Pastoralis  Cura,  a 
text-book  for  the  guidance  of  bishops,  teaches  them 
to  instruct  the  faithful  that  it  is  not  sufficient  to  for- 

1  St  Barnabas,  Epistle.  2- 3'  «»* 4  Marson. 


io8      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

bear  coveting  other  men's  goods,  if  one  does  not 
bestow  one's  own  in  alms.  The  parable  of  the  barren 
fig-tree  is  the  story  of  owners  who  idly  keep  what 
could  benefit  so  many :  "  A  barren  fig-tree  holds  the 
land  when  a  fool  overcasts  with  the  shadow  of  his 
inactivity  a  place  which  another  could  use  with  the 
sunshine  of  good  work."  Those  who  are  niggardly 
in  almsgiving  must  be  clearly  made  to  understand 
that — 

The  land  which  yields  them  income  is  the  common 
property  of  all  men,  and  for  this  reason  the  fruits  of  it, 
which  are  brought  forth,  are  for  the  common  welfare.  It  is 
therefore  absurd  for  people  to  think  they  do  no  harm  when 
they  claim  God's  common  gift  of  food  as  their  private 
property,  or  that  they  are  not  robbers,  when  they  do  not 
pass  on  what  they  have  received  to  their  neighbours. 
Absurd  !  because  almost  as  many  folk  die  daily  as  they 
have  rations  locked  up  for  at  home.  Really,  when  we 
administer  any  necessities  to  the  poor,  we  give  them  their 
own  ;  we  do  not  bestow  our  goods  upon  them.  We  do 
not  fulfil  the  works  of  mercy ;  we  discharge  the  debt  of 
justice.  Hence  it  was  that  Very  Truth,  when  He  told  us 
to  be  careful  to  show  mercy,  said,  '  See  that  ye  do  not  your 
justice  before  men.'  In  harmony  with  this  the  Psalmist 
too  said,  '  He  hath  dispersed,  He  hath  given  to  the  poor, 
His  justice  remaineth  for  ever.'  For  when  he  reviewed  a 
lavish  generosity  to  the  poor,  he  chose  to  call  it  justice 
rather  than  mercy,  because  what  is  given  us  by  a  common 
God  is  only  justly  used  when  those  who  have  received  it 
use  it  in  common. 

St  Chrysostom,  in  his  sermons  on  the  rich  man  and 
Lazarus,  compares  owners  of  property  with  robbers,  who 
go  out  into  the  highways  and  despoil  the  passers-by ; 
they  convert  their  chambers  into  caverns  in  which 
they  bury  the  goods  of  others.  He  speaks  of  inherit- 
ance as  generally  the  fruit  of  theft  and  crime.  St 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  109 

Basil  refers  to  rich  men  as  thieves.  St  Clement 
holds  that  private  property  is  the  result  of  iniquity. 
St  Basil  again  says,  "  Who  gives  to  a  poor  man  gives 
to  God."  St  Jerome  asserts  that  wealth  is  the  result 
of  one's  own  theft,  or  that  of  one's  ancestors.  Ter- 
tullian  tells  us  that  all  property  is  common  among 
Christians,  excepting  wives. 

Tertullian,  in  spite  of  his  communism,  was  never 
canonised,  because  he  held  the  anti-Christian  position, 
"  that  every  prospect  pleases,  and  only  man  is  vile." 
Clement  of  Alexandria  fails  to  receive  canonisation, 
perhaps  because,  although  he  is  sound  on  the  subject 
of  human  nature,  he  is  suspected  of  pandering  to  the 
rich  on  the  subject  of  private  property.  He  would, 
of  course,  have  been  horrified  at  the  individualist 
sentiments  nowadays  expressed  by  opponents  of  the 
Church  Socialist  League  in  the  pages  of  the  Guardian 
and  the  Church  Times.  Every  early  and  mediaeval 
orthodox  writer  would  have  considered  the  opinions 
of  modern  individualist  Churchmen  as  the  frankest 
heresy  ;  Clement,  nevertheless,  is  inclined  to  temporise, 
and  allegorises  such  stories  as  that  of  the  rich  young 
man  and  the  needle's  eye. 

Recent  researches  of  Dr  Harnack  and  Dr  Gore 
have  established  the  fact  that  what  is  now  called  the 
"  right  to  live  "  was  a  foremost  principle  of  the  Early 
Church. 

The  early  Christian  Church  was,  in  its  temper  and  char- 
acteristics, just  what  we  should  expect  from  all  this  teaching. 
In  the  everlasting  opposition  of  rich  and  poor,  beyond  all 
possibility  of  question,  it  ranked  among  and  spoke  for  the 
poor.  It  did  not  so  much  exalt  the  dignity  of  labour 
as  make  the  obligation  of  labour  positive  and  absolute  on 


no      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

all  its  members.  .  .  .  Each  man  is  to  labour  with  his  own 
hands,  and  so  eat  his  own  bread.  There  is  to  be  support  for 
those  who  cannot  work,  but  not  for  those  who  will  not.  The 
Christian  is  to  be  content  with  the  bare  necessities  of  actual 
life — having  food  and  covering.  What  he  earns  over  and 
above  that,  he  should  not  accumulate  for  his  own  enjoyment, 
but  give  to  him  that  needeth.  The  Lord's  warnings  are 
reiterated  upon  those  who  seek  to  become  rich  men.  They 
can  hardly  escape  perdition  (i  Tim.  vi.  6).1 

It  will  now  be  interesting  to  consider  what  manner 
of  men  those  early-  Christians  were  who  propounded 
these  theological  and  political  doctrines.  The  French 
theologian  Bossuet  speaks  in  one  of  his  sermons  of 
the  Church,  which  was  founded  for  the  poor  alone, 
for  they  are  the  true  citizens  of  that  happy  city  which 
is  called  the  City  of  God.  We  may  compare  this 
with  a  paragraph  from  Dr  Gore  :  "  He  chose  his  instru- 
ments .  .  .  from  the  class  accustomed  to  live  hardly 
and  depend  for  sustenance  upon  daily  labour.  To 
this  class  he  gave  the  prerogative  position  in  his 
Church.  It  is  people  of  this  kind  who  can  pray  most 
naturally  the  prayer  to  God  the  Father,  ' Give  us 
to-day  bread  for  the  coming  day.5"2  The  Christian 
Church  carried  on  the  Jewish  tradition  as  to  the 
necessity  of  labour. 

Our  Lord's  immediate  followers  were,  for  the  most 
part,  poor  men.  They  were  not  drawn  from  the 
ranks  of  unskilled  labour,  nor  from  the  abject  poverty 
of  the  slums.  They  were  skilled  artisans,  precisely 
the  type  of  men  who  are  now  found  voting  for 
socialism  in  the  Colne  Valley  and  the  manufacturing 
cities  of  the  North  and  Midlands,  hand-workers,  in 

1  Bishop  Gore,  Manchester,  1908. 

2  Bishop  Gore,  Barrow-in- Furnace,  1906. 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  in 

contact  with  the  hard  realities  of  life,  and  yet  possessing 
a  comparative  leisure  and  those  bare  necessities  of 
living,  the  denial  of  which  drives  the  slum-dwellers, 
not  to  revolution,  but  to  the  inertia  of  despair.  The 
men  who  had  ears  to  hear  the  Gospel  of  a  Divine 
commonwealth  were  mostly  master  -  boatmen  and 
skilled  peasants;  in  addition  to  these  we  read  of  a  few 
disciples  from  outcast  but  not  abjectly  poor  classes, 
Mary  of  Magdala  and  Matthew,  who  has  often  been 
described  as  a  rich  man,  but  who  was  more  probably 
a  mere  telonarius,  existing  on  a  small  daily  salary. 
He  was  able  to  give  a  supper  party  to  his  friends  ;  but 
small  shopkeepers  and  artisans  are  no  less  able  to 
entertain.  Modern  Christians  are  fond  of  allegorising 
and  explaining  away  the  simple  facts  of  the  Gospel. 
They  will  hardly  understand  the  significance  of 
Christ's  "  Come  unto  Me,  all  ye  that  labour,"  and  of 
His  Mother's  "  He  hath  filled  the  hungry  with  good 
things,"  until  they  bring  themselves  to  realise  that  in 
the  early  days  not  many  high  officials,  not  many 
aristocrats,  not  many  plutocrats  were  pressing  into 
the  Church  ;  "  but  God  chose  the  foolish  things  of  this 
world  that  He  might  put  to  shame  them  that  are 
wise,  and  God  chose  the  weak  things  of  the  world 
that  He  might  put  to  shame  the  things  that  are  strong, 
and  the  base  things  of  the  world  and  the  things  that 
are  despised  did  God  choose,  yea,  and  the  things  that 
are  not,  that  He  might  bring  to  nought  the  things 
that  are."  There  was  a  tendency  in  early  times  to 
snobbery.  St  James  had  to  reprove  some  who  were 
too  fussy  in  their  attentions  to  plutocratic  converts 
with  their  gold  rings  and  fine  clothing.  How  the 


ii2      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

English  Church,  or  indeed  any  other,  can  permit  the 
pew-rent  system  in  face  of  St  James's  utterances,  is 
one  of  those  mysteries  which  will  never  be  solved 
until  we  can  understand  the  intricacies  of  the  modern 
Christian  mind. 

To  those  who  say  that  the  Christian  religion  has 
only  to  do  with  men's  souls  and  not  their  bodies,  St 
James  answers  in  anticipation  :  "  If  a  brother  or  sister 
be  naked  and  in  lack  of  daily  food,  and  one  of  you 
say  unto  them,  Go  in  peace,  be  ye  warmed  and  filled, 
and  yet  ye  give  them  not  the  things  needful  to  the 
body,  what  doth  it  profit  ? "  The  motto  of  this 
Epistle  is :  "  Let  the  brother  of  low  degree  glory  in  his 
high  estate,  and  the  rich  in  that  he  hath  been  made 
low ;  because  as  the  flower  of  the  grass  he  shall  pass 
away.  For  the  sun  ariseth  with  a  scorching  wind, 
and  withereth  the  grass ;  and  the  flower  thereof  falleth, 
and  the  grace  of  the  fashion  of  it  perisheth :  so  also 
shall  the  rich  man  fade  away  in  his  goings." 

Go  to  now,  ye  rich  men,  weep  and  howl  for  your  miseries 
that  shall  come  upon  you.  Your  riches  are  corrupted,  and 
your  garments  are  motheaten.  Your  gold  and  silver  is 
cankered ;  and  the  rust  of  them  shall  be  a  witness  against 
you,  and  shall  eat  your  flesh  as  it  were  fire.  Ye  have  heaped 
treasure  together  for  the  last  days.  Behold,  the  hire  of  the 
labourers  who  have  reaped  down  your  fields,  which  is  of  you 
kept  back  by  fraud,  crieth  :  and  the  cries  of  them  that  have 
reaped  are  entered  into  the  ears  of  the  Lord  of  sabaoth. 
Ye  have  lived  in  pleasure  on  the  earth,  and  been  wanton ; 
ye  have  nourished  your  hearts,  as  in  a  day  of  slaughter. 
Ye  have  condemned  and  killed  the  just;  he  doth  not 
resist  you. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  St  James  voices  the 
current  Christian  belief  that  the  world  is  on  the  eve 


THE  EARLY  CHURCH  113 

of  a  revolution,  for  the  King  will  come  in  His 
Kingdom,  the  mighty  will  be  put  down  from  their 
seats,  the  rich  sent  empty  away ;  the  poor,  whom 
in  the  thought  and  language  of  the  day,  he  calls  the 
just  ones,  for  they  alone  have  obeyed  God's  law  of 
labour,  will  be  avenged  of  their  adversaries. 

St  Paul,  the  manual  labourer,  asserts  the  universal 
duty  of  work  :  if  anyone  will  not  work  neither  shall  he 
eat.  He  does,  indeed,  include  intellectual  and  moral 
ministry  as  labour,  but  for  himself  he  prefers  to 
labour  with  his  own  hands  and  so  earn  his  own 
living.  This  duty  of  work  was  not  treated  by  the 
Church  as  the  temporary  advice  of  St  Paul,  but  as 
an  essential  note  of  New  Testament  teaching.  It  is 
over  and  over  again  referred  to  by  the  Fathers  and  in 
Church  law,  as  the  basic  economic  principle  of  the 
Christian  religion.  The  bishops  and  creed-builders 
of  the  Church  did  not  belong  to  the  comfortable 
classes.  They  were  stone-cutters  and  masons,  brick- 
layers and  carpenters,  chosen  by  the  whole  Christian 
democracy;  none  were  too  poor,  too  unlettered,  or 
too  ordinary  to  be  enfranchised ;  baptism  involved 
the  franchise  for  men  and  women  alike,  and,  some 
say,  even  for  children.  Athanasius  was  elected  by 
the  vote  of  the  whole  people.  Ambrose  likewise 
owed  his  archbishopric  to  the  democratic  vote. 
St  Cyprian  and  Origen,  St  Gregory  Nazianzen, 
St  Jerome,  St  Leo,  and  a  host  of  others  bear  witness 
to  the  electoral  rights  of  the  christened  democracy. 
Our  modern  bishops  are  gentlemen l  and  are  chosen 

1  Many  modern  bishops  have  come  from  the  artisan  class,  but  on 
becoming  clergymen  they  now  cease  to  be  artisans. 

8 


ii4      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

by  capitalist  governments.  Bishop  Alexander,  in  the 
third  century,  was  a  charcoal-burner  chosen  by  the 
people.  The  Council  of  Constantinople,  in  the  fourth 
century,  was  composed  of  bishops  who  were  plough- 
men, weavers,  tanners,  blacksmiths,  and  the  like.1 
From  the  socialist  point  of  view,  it  is  not  necessary 
to  insist  on  this  labour  aspect  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
for  the  socialist  who  understands  his  business  will 
prefer  a  social-democratic  duke  to  a  plutocracy- 
loving  dustman,  welcoming  help  from  whatever  class 
it  comes,  and  knowing  nothing  of  class  distinction. 
The  socialist  movement  does  not  merely  aim  at 
securing  this  or  that  material  advantage  for  the 
skilled  artisan.  Nevertheless,  it  is  undeniable  that 
the  coming  of  socialism  will  be  greatly  accelerated 
by  the  conversion  of  the  artisan  class,  and  that  social 
democracy  is  unattainable  without  the  aid  of  the 
skilled  workman  ;  and  therefore  it  is  significant  not 
only  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  is  essentially 
socialist,  but  that  the  councils  which  built  up  that 
doctrine  might,  with  little  exaggeration,  be  called 
labour  conferences. 

1  Cf.  Charles  Marson's  pamphlet  on  The  Church  and  Democracy. 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF 
ST  PAUL 

' '  The  Powers  that  be  " — The  critics  criticised— Jewish  hostility  to  the 
Empire — The  crime  of  unsuccessful  rebellion — Unhealthy  anti- 
imperialism — Early  Christian  self-satisfaction — St  Paul  reasserting 
the  universality  of  the  Good  Spirit — Saves  the  Church  from 
exclusiveness — The  successor  of  Alexander — Wide-minded  Jews 
of  the  dispersion — "Slaves,  obey  your  masters" — A  revolutionary 
counsel  of  obedience — St  Paul  on  fairness  and  charity — Did 
St  Paul  believe  in  a  cataclysmic  Kingdom  ? — Onesimus — The 
eternal  and  the  temporal  in  Pauline  teaching — The  Church  and 
manumission  —  The  reign  of  Nature  —  The  Golden  Age — The 
Church  and  the  philosophers  on  its  implications — St  Augustine 
exceptional  and  eccentric — St  Gregory  on  slavery — The  stagnant 
versus  the  living  ages  —  The  theory  of  Divine  right  —  Divided 
opinions  on  nature  of  civil  authority  —  The  socialism  of  the 
Fathers  questioned — The  theory  of  stewardship — Almsgiving  as 
justice,  not  charity — Ashley's  conclusion — Eternal  ideas  and 
temporal  forms. 


THE    SOCIOLOGY   OF    ST    PAUL 

"  For  ye  see  your  calling,  brethren,  how  that  not  many  wise  men,  as 
the  world  counts  wisdom,  not  many  influential,  not  many  men  of  noble 
birth,  are  called.  But  God  hath  chosen  the  foolish  things  of  the  world 
to  confound  the  wise ;  and  God  hath  chosen  the  weak  things  of  the 
world  to  confound  the  things  which  are  mighty  ;  and  base  things  of  the 
world,  and  things  which  are  despised,  hath  God  chosen,  yea,  and  things 
which  are  not,  to  bring  to  nought  things  that  are  :  that  no  flesh  should 
glory  in  his  presence." — I  COR.  i.  26-29. 

"  If  any  man  would  not  work,  neither  should  he  eat." — 2  THESS.  iii.  10. 

"For  as  the  body  is  one,  and  hath  many  members,  and  all  the 
members  of  that  one  body,  being  many,  are  one  body :  so  also  is  Christ. 
For  by  one  Spirit  are  we  all  baptized  into  one  body,  whether  we  be 
Jews  or  Gentiles,  whether  we  be  bond  or  free  ;  and  have  been  all  made 
to  drink  into  one  Spirit.  For  the  body  is  not  one  member,  but  many. 
.  .  .  Much  more  those  members  of  the  body,  which  seem  to  be  more 
feeble,  are  necessary  ;  and  those  members  of  the  body,  which  we  think 
to  be  less  honourable,  upon  these  we  bestow  more  abundant  honour  ; 
.  .  .  God  having  tempered  the  body  together,  having  given  abundant 
honour  to  that  part  which  lacked  :  that  there  should  be  no  division  in 
the  body  ;  but  that  the  members  should  have  the  same  care  one  for 
another.  And  whether  one  member  suffer,  all  the  members  suffer  with 
it ;  or  one  member  be  honoured,  all  the  members  rejoice  with  it.  Now 
ye  are  the  body  of  Christ,  and  its  several  members." — I  COR.  xii. 

"But  by  an  equality,  that  now  at  this  time  your  abundance  may 
make  good  their  want,  that  their  abundance  may  make  good  your 
want,  that  there  may  be  equality.  As  it  is  written,  He  that  had 
gathered  much  had  nothing  over  ;  and  he  that  had  gathered  little  had 
no  lack." — 2  COR.  viii.  14,  15. 

THE  Church  socialist  position  is  often   assailed   by 
people  who  quote  certain  passages  from  the  various 

117 


n8      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Epistles  which  form  so  integral  a  part  of  the  canon 
of  Holy  Scripture.  They  argue  that  the  socialist 
position  is  ridiculous  in  the  face  of  such  Scriptural 
injunctions  as,  "  Slaves,  obey  your  masters,"  and, 
"  Honour  the  king." l  If  this  chapter  is  chiefly  devoted 
to  a  consideration  of  their  contentions,  it  is  because 
St  Paul's  teaching  on  the  democratic  and  socialist 
nature  of  the  Church's  constitution  has  frequently  and 
fully  been  dealt  with.  It  will  be  alluded  to  in  the  sacra- 
mental section  (Chapter  VI.),  and  I  have  prefaced  the 
present  chapter  with  quotations  from  his  social  teach- 
ing. Should  my  readers  accept  the  conclusions  here 
suggested  in  the  matter  of  the  Pauline  attitude  towards 
government  and  slavery,  they  will  be  able  themselves 
to  resolve  the  whole  of  his  teaching  into  a  harmony. 

Before  we  proceed  to  a  more  minute  examination 
of  St  Paul's  ideas,  let  us  consider  what  is  implied  in 
our  critics'  objections,  and  how  far  that  implication  will 
lead  us. 

The  authority  whom  Paul  bade  us  obey  was  the 
Roman  Emperor,  and  the  reason  he  gives  in  support 
of  his  counsel  is,  that  the  Imperial  Government  is, 
in  his  time,  the  supreme  civil  power,  and  the  powers 
that  be  are  ordained  of  God.  The  limited  monarchy 
of  modern  England,  the  unlimited  czardom  of  Russia, 
the  republicanism  of  France  are  as  unlike  each  other 
as  anything  could  well  be,  but  each,  for  its  own  country 
and  time,  represents  the  powers  that  be.  We  must 
ask  our  critics,  do  they  consider  that  St  Paul's  counsel 

1  Cf.  with  St  Paul's  teaching  this  Petrine  passage,  I  Peter  ii.  17  and 
1 8.  The  Petrine  and  Pauline  Epistles  are  remarkably  alike  in  their  view 
of  the  nature  of  authority.  The  question  of  the  authorship  of  St  Peter's 
letters  need  not  concern  us  here. 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          119 

limits  us  to  honouring  the  head  of  a  given  State  only 
in  the  event  of  his  possessing  the  exact  status  of  a 
Roman  Emperor?  Supposing  his  counsel  to  be  of 
eternal  obligation,  does  it,  or  does  it  not,  bind  us  to 
honour  and  obey  the  president  of  a  republic,  if  we 
are  Frenchmen ;  or  if  we  are  Englishmen,  the  powers 
that  be  in  England,  namely,  Parliament  together  with 
a  limited  monarchy  ?  Is  the  Church  of  France  ortho- 
dox or  unorthodox  when  it  sings  in  the  public  liturgy, 
"  O  Lord,  save  the  Republic,"  seeing  that  the  French 
Republic  is  a  different  type  of  "  power  that  is "  from 
Roman  Emperorship?  Is  the  Church  of  England 
right  or  wrong  in  singing,  "  O  Lord,  save  the  King," 
seeing  that  the  modern  English  monarchy  is  almost 
as  different  a  "  power  that  is "  from  the  Roman 
Emperorship  as  is  the  French  Republic  ?  The  most 
orthodox  of  theologians  throughout  the  centuries 
have  generally  held  that  this  Pauline  counsel,  which 
has  in  some  sense  been  endorsed  by  the  Church,  has 
in  fact  been  so  endorsed  as  meaning  that  Christians 
owe  honour  and  obedience  to  the  civil  government, 
whatever  may  be  the  particular  form  of  government 
obtaining  in  their  country  in  their  own  particular 
period.  The  theologians  are  generally  as  careful  to 
add  that  there  are  exceptions  to  the  rule,  and  to 
admit  on  certain  rare  occasions  an  ultimate  right  of 
rebellion.  So  careful  and  conservative  a  Catholic 
encyclopaedist  as  St  Thomas  Aquinas  leaves  us 
in  no  doubt  on  this  point.  If,  therefore,  our  critics 
insist  on  this  line  of  argument  drawn  from  St  Paul, 
I  fear  it  must  inevitably  land  them  in  implicit 
obedience  to  a  socialist  government  should  such  a 


120      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

form  of  government  ever  become  the  power  that  is. 
They  will  then  no  doubt  be  glad  to  remember  the 
tradition  as  to  a  right  of  rebellion,  all  allusions  to 
which  they  are  now  so  careful  to  suppress.  Taking 
it  quite  literally,  therefore,  as  these  critics  urge  us  to 
take  this  Pauline  counsel,  it  would  only  seem  to 
commit  us  to  a  general  respect  and  obedience  to  an 
autocratic,  or  a  social-democratic,  or  any  other  prevail- 
ing form  of  administration.  In  the  natural  course  of 
events — or,  shall  we  say,  in  the  Divine  ordering  of  the 
world  ? — a  people  more  or  less  gets  the  government 
it  deserves.  And  a  counsel  of  obedience  to  the  civil 
government  accords  with  the  socialist  feeling  for 
order  and  construction,  in  opposition  to  the  anarchist- 
individualist  contempt  for  all  human  administration. 

Beyond  all  this,  St  Paul's  teaching  cannot  in  fact 
be  literally  observed  in  our  own  day,  although  the 
spirit  of  it  may,  by  the  modern  Church,  be  applied  to 
meet  the  entirely  changed  circumstances.  Christian 
people  were  in  his  day  a  small  band  in  the  midst  of 
a  hostile  world,  without  civil  rights,  altogether  unable 
constitutionally  to  influence  politics,  or  to  take  their 
part  in  creating  the  powers  that  be.  Their  natural 
tendency  was  therefore  to  ignore  every  regulation 
of  the  civil  government,  and  this  passive  resist- 
ance easily  became  active  resistance  under  such 
an  administration  as  that  of  Nero.  The  enormous 
Jewish  element  in  these  early  Christian  communities 
would  tend  to  perpetuate  that  crude  hostility 
to  the  Empire  which  had  been  so  strong  a 
feature  of  the  Palestinian  Jew  of  the  Gospel  period. 
Resistance  to  the  Roman  power  was  very  largely  the 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          121 

outcome  of  that  narrow  nationalist  hatred  of  the 
foreigner  for  which  our  Lord  had  sought  to  substitute 
a  wide  internationalism.  Rebellion  against  Roman 
administration  was  to  be  discouraged  for  at  least  two 
very  good  reasons.  The  minor  reason  was  that  all 
such  rebellion  at  that  particular  moment,  and  under 
those  particular  circumstances,  would  have  resulted 
only  in  massacre  and  defeat.  There  was  not  even 
that  vestige  of  chance  in  the  situation  which  there 
must  be  admitted  to  exist  in  Russia  at  the  present 
day.  The  wise  general  will  encourage  a  fight  against 
enormous  odds  ;  but  in  circumstances  where  he  knows 
that  defeat  is  not  only  very  possible,  but  is  practically 
speaking  inevitable,  he  will  consider  it  a  crime  to 
sacrifice  his  troops.  Obedience,  therefore,  for  the 
time  being,  would  have  been  the  only  possible 
policy,  even  if  St  Paul  had  been  an  absolute  rebel 
against  the  Roman  authority.  There  are  many 
circumstances  in  which  those  who  take  the  sword 
will  perish  by  the  sword.  But  the  major  reason  was 
that  the  motive  of  this  constant  tendency  to  rebellion 
in  the  early  Church  was  by  no  means  free  of  a 
certain  meanness  and  inhuman  crudity.  Not  only 
was  there  the  Jewish  tendency  to  despise  foreigners, 
but  Christian  communities  themselves,  whether  com- 
posed of  Jews  or  Gentiles,  or  both,  were  peculiarly 
subject  to  the  temptation  of  pride  and  complacent 
exclusiveness.  If  one  has  to  beware  when  all  men 
speak  well  of  one,  one  has  almost  equally  to  be  wary 
when  all  men  speak  evil  of  one.  The  man 
who  is  over-appreciated,  and  the  man  who  is 
altogether  unappreciated,  are  alike  in  danger  of 


122      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

being  driven  in  upon  themselves  and  of  a  conse- 
quent Pharisaism.  This  is  true  not  only  of  the 
individual,  but  of  the  community :  too  easy  a  success 
and  too  swift  a  popularity  are  perhaps  its  worst 
danger  ;  but  implacable  hostility,  universal  misunder- 
standing and  persecution  constitute  a  very  real 
danger  also.  Renan  has  a  very  illuminating  passage, 
in  which,  while  he  admits  the  truth  of  the  saying, 
"  The  blood  of  the  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the  Church," 
he  points  out  that  the  ruthless  persecution  and  hatred 
of  minorities  by  tyrannous  majorities  does  often  create 
a  lesion  in  the  minds  of  the  persecuted  body,  and 
drives  it  or  deflects  it  from  its  proper  channel  into 
some  unhealthy  and  neurotic  by-path.  Without 
committing  oneself  entirely  to  this  statement,  one 
cannot  but  acknowledge  that  something  of  this  sort 
was  occurring  in  the  early  Christian  communities  of  the 
first  century,  and  that  they  were  saved  from  its  worst 
consequences  by  the  sanity  and  the  genius  of  St  Paul. 
The  tendency  among  these  Christians  of  the  first 
century,  in  consequence  of  the  contempt  and  hatred 
in  which  they  were  held,  was  to  drive  them  into  a 
self-sufficiency  and  exclusiveness  which  led  to  their 
belief  that  all  virtue  resided  in  the  Christian  body, 
and  to  their  claiming  that  monopoly  in  God  which 
had  been  in  former  times  the  disastrous  claim  of  the 
Jewish  nation.  The  Kingdom  had  been  taken  away 
from  that  nation  and  given  to  a  people  bringing  forth 
the  fruits  thereof.  They  rightly  felt  themselves  to 
be  that  people,  but,  driven  in  upon  themselves  by 
persecution,  they  were  likely  to  deny  the  universal 
Spirit  from  whom  all  good  things  would  come,  and 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          123 

to  regard  the  whole  civilised  world,  Jewish  as  well  as 
Gentile,  as  not  only  corrupt  and  very  far  gone  from 
original  righteousness,  but  as  essentially  evil  and 
absolutely  under  the  dominion  of  him  from  whom 
no  good  thing  can  come.  It  was  such  a  spirit  as 
this  that  led  them  to  rebellion  against  the  civil 
government  of  their  day;  it  was  this  spirit  which 
St  Paul  wished  to  exorcise.  He  saw  in  civil  insti- 
tutions, however  imperfect  their  form,  some  attempt 
of  the  good  human  spirit  of  society  towards  adequate 
expression.  He  recognised  no  absolute  divorce 
between  the  spirit  of  Seneca  and  Plutarch  and 
the  good  spirit  of  the  Christian  community.  The 
Christian  revelation  was  the  fulfilment  of  Greek  and 
Roman  as  well  as  of  Jewish  hope  and  prophecy. 
The  God  whom  the  Athenians  unknowingly  wor- 
shipped, Him  he  declared  unto  them,  for  they  were 
also  His  offspring ;  in  Him  all  live  and  move  and 
have  their  being,  as  their  own  prophets  had  said. 
Greeks  and  Romans,  who  had  not  known  the  Jewish 
law,  had  not  been  left  without  witness :  "  For  when 
nations  which  have  no  law  do  by  nature  the  things 
of  the  law,  these  having  no  law,  are  a  law  unto  them- 
selves, in  that  they  show  the  work  of  the  law  written  in 
their  hearts,  their  conscience  bearing  witness  therewith, 
and  their  thoughts  one  with  another  accusing  or  else 
excusing  them  in  the  day  when  God  judgeth  the 
secrets  of  men  according  to  my  gospel  by  Jesus  Christ." 
There  is  perhaps  nothing  more  amazing  in  the 
development  of  the  Christian  faith  than  the  con- 
version of  St  Peter  and  St  Paul,  the  one  a  narrow 
Palestinian  peasant,  the  other  a  learned  Jew  of  the 


124      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

dispersion,  but  belonging  to  the  straitest  sect  of 
the  Pharisees,  from  the  exclusive,  contemptuous, 
nationalist  view  of  goodness,  to  the  universalism  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

St  Paul  saw  in  the  imperialism  of  Rome  as 
essential  a  contribution  to  the  international  Kingdom 
of  God  as  was  to  be  found  in  quite  another  direction 
in  the  teachings  of  the  prophets  of  Israel.  As  a  Jew 
of  the  dispersion  and  a  Roman  citizen,  Paul  had 
inherited  not  only  the  thought  of  the  Jewish  but  of 
the  Graeco-Roman  world,  the  Hellenistic  ideal  which 
meant  fusion  of  race,  unity  of  language,  union  of 
cities,  and  religious  toleration.  He  has  been  called 
the  successor  of  Alexander  the  Great,  of  Julius 
Caesar  and  Augustus.  The  ideal  Roman  Emperor 
had  stood  for  a  certain  largeness  of  belief,  according 
to  which  no  citizen  was  to  keep  himself  to  himself, 
cribbed  and  confined  within  his  own  little  city,  but 
was  to  be  a  citizen  of  the  world.  The  Emperor 
refused  to  act  in  one  way  to  Greeks  and  in  another 
to  barbarians.  He  would  not  be  a  constitutional 
ruler  to  the  one  and  a  despot  to  the  other.  He  re- 
garded himself  as  heaven-sent  peace-maker  to  the 
civilised  world.  Alexander's  ideal  was  the  conception 
of  a  spiritual  Greece  beyond  the  bond  of  Greek  blood, 
with  which  we  may  well  compare  St  Paul's  conception 
of  a  spiritual  Israel  beyond  the  bond  of  Jewish  blood. 
All  brave  men,  according  to  him,  were  Greeks;  all 
cowards,  barbarians.  Plutarch  says  of  him  that  as  in 
a  loving-cup  he  mixed  together  customs,  marriages, 
manner  of  life,  and  ordered  all  to  think  of  the  whole 
world  as  their  native  land,  of  the  camp  as  the  citadel 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          125 

and  garrison  of  that  land,  and  to  treat  the  good  in 
all  lands  as  their  kinsmen,  and  only  the  evil  as  of 
alien  race. 

The  Jews  of  the  dispersion  scattered  up  and  down 
the  civilised  world  would  naturally  be  inclined  to  a 
broader  view  than  their  Palestinian  fellow-country- 
men. They  did  in  fact  lay  stress  upon  the  more 
universal  aspect  of  the  Messiah,  whose  work  would 
transcend  the  limits  of  Israel  and  whose  reign  would 
establish  a  world-wide  goodness  and  justice.1  There 
were  therefore  in  the  world  of  that  day  Gentile  and 
Jewish  lines  of  thought  converging  towards  the 
internationalism  of  Jesus.  It  would  almost  seem  to 
be  as  if  a  narrow  Pharisaism  dominated  Saul's 
nature,  but  that  unconsciously  he  had  absorbed  what 
we  may  call  the  modernist  ideal,  which  was 
working  like  a  leaven  beneath  his  surface  ideas ; 
the  work  was,  though  secret  and  gradual,  thorough. 
On  the  road  to  Damascus,  in  a  blinding  flash, 
the  truth  came  upon  him  that  Jesus,  whom 
he  persecuted,  was  the  internationalist  Saviour,  the 
very  embodiment  of  that  universal  and  liberating 
spirit  which  he  had  unconsciously  harboured,  but  up 
till  then  consciously  denied.  We  may  seem  to  have 
travelled  far  from  the  original  question  as  to  the 
exact  meaning  in  Paul's  mind  of  "The  powers  that 
be  are  ordained  of  God,"  but  in  reality  we  have  only 
sought  to  understand  those  deeper  mental  issues  which 
led  him  to  check  a  crude  and  narrow  revolutionism 
with  a  certain  vehemence. 

If  our  critics  insist  on  urging,  as  against  the  Church 

1  Cf.  Isa.  xi.  9-12,  xlii.  1-6. 


126      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

socialist  interpretation  of  religion,  the  counsel  of 
St  Paul,  "  Slaves,  obey  your  masters,"  we  must  again 
ask  them  how  far  we  may  take  them  seriously.  Does 
this  counsel,  in  their  opinion,  bind  the  Church  to  a 
perpetual  defence  of  slavery,  whether  it  be  the 
corporal  slavery  of  the  Congo  or  the  economic 
slavery  of  Europe?  Does  it,  to  their  mind,  involve 
the  position  that  any  effort  whatsoever,  whether  by 
method  of  argument,  of  converting  public  opinion, 
of  the  ballot-box,  or  of  the  bayonet,  is  antichristian 
on  the  part  of  black  or  white  slaves  ?  Do  they  further 
hold  that  the  Christian  public  generally  may  not, 
because  of  this  one  text  in  St  Paul,  vote  for  the 
modification  or  abolition  of  any  form  of  slavery ;  or 
do  they  only  hold  that  such  an  abolitionist  move- 
ment is  of  the  spirit  of  antichrist,  if  slaves  or  other 
down-trodden  people  themselves  take  any  hand  in 
it?  We  understand  them  to  say  that  working  men 
may  not  vote  for  a  constitutional  change  in  economic 
conditions,  known  as  socialism,  because  St  Paul  said, 
"  Slaves,  obey  your  masters."  Must  working  men,  then, 
vote  against  it,  or  merely  abstain  from  voting  on  that 
issue?  Do  they  go  further  and  urge  that  Christian 
people  generally  may  not  vote  for  a  constitutional 
change  of  this  sort,  because  it  would  involve  an 
abolition  of  slavery,  under  which  abolition  it  would 
be  impossible  for  slaves  to  obey  their  masters  ?  Or 
dp  these  people  hold  anything  at  all ;  are  they  merely 
flinging  a  chance  text  at  our  heads,  the  force  of  the 
fling  being  in  the  bitterness  of  their  prejudices  ? 

If  they  reply,  "  But  we  absolutely  deny  that   the 
present  state  of  society  involves  slavery  of  any  kind," 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          127 

we  must  politely  remind  them  that  in  that  case  the 
counsel,  "  Slaves,  obey  your  masters,"  cannot  possibly 
apply.  If  they  further  assert,  "It  was  the  force  of 
Christian  opinion  which  abolished  slavery  in  America," 
we  must  remind  them  that  it  did  so  in  spite  of 
their  rendering  of  "  Slaves,  obey  your  masters,"  and 
would  never  have  done  so  had  it  accepted  their 
rendering.  In  point  of  fact,  the  intellectual  ancestors 
of  these  reactionary  Christians  ridiculed  Shaftesbury 
and  Wilberforce,  and  raged  against  them  as  un- 
scriptural  revolutionaries.  "  Woe  unto  you !  for  ye 
build  the  sepulchres  of  the  prophets,  and  your  fathers 
killed  them.  Truly  ye  bear  witness  that  ye  allow  the 
deeds  of  your  fathers :  for  they  indeed  killed  them, 
and  ye  build  their  sepulchres." l 

Again  we  must  remind  ourselves  of  the  actual 
constitution  and  the  limitations  of  these  early  Chris- 
tian communities.  They  were  almost  entirely  com- 
posed of  slaves,  and  they  were  without  constitutional 
rights.  Slaves  had  from  time  to  time  decided  to 
disobey  their  masters  and  had  revolted  against  them  ; 
the  consequence  had  invariably  been  ruthless  massacre. 
Once  more,  then,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  wise 
general,  how  could  St  Paul  at  that  time  and  under 
those  circumstances,  even  had  he  been  a  fiercer 
revolutionist  than  he  was,  have  counselled  slaves  to 
disobey  their  masters  ?  I  have  known  more  than 
one  foreign  revolutionist,  whose  views  were  extreme 
enough  to  satisfy  the  fiercest  of  his  followers,  who 
has,  under  the  particular  circumstances  of  the  moment, 
checked  the  impetuosity  of  those  followers,  and  to  all 

1  St  Luke  xi.  47,  48. 


128      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

intents  and  purposes  issued  the  order,  "  Slaves,  obey 
your  masters."  I  have  seen  almost  hundreds  of  strikes 
averted  by  the  counsel  of  labour  leaders  who  would 
not  be  suspected  of  pro-slavery  inclination.  It  is 
therefore  not  difficult  to  imagine  that  the  leaders  of 
the  Church,  who  were  described  as  men  who  had 
turned  the  world  upside  down — a  sufficiently  revolu- 
tionary description, — should  counsel  obedience  under 
the  particular  circumstances. 

But  there  was  more  than  mere  policy  in  such  a 
counsel.  Just  as  the  motive  to  revolt  against  the 
civil  government  was  not  particularly  worthy,  so  the 
motive  to  revolt  against  masters  was  by  no  means 
entirely  free  from  suspicion.  After  all,  conservatism 
and  obedience  on  the  one  hand,  or  revolution  and 
rebellion  on  the  other,  treated  merely  as  abstract 
conceptions,  are  things  indifferent.  St  Paul  had 
preached  to  masters  and  slaves  alike  the  Gospel  of 
a  Kingdom  in  which  there  was  neither  Jew  nor 
Greek,  barbarian  nor  Scythian,  bond  nor  free,  and  we 
can  well  imagine  the  difficult  position  of  those  few 
masters  who  had  been  generous-hearted  enough  to 
be  converted  to  this  revolutionary  and  democratic 
philosophy.  They  would  find  that  this  essential 
equality  and  fellowship  was  being  seized  hold  upon 
by  all  kinds  of  worthless  and  idle  persons,  not  because 
they  believed  in  fellowship,  but  as  an  excuse  for 
putting  the  hated  master  into  an  intolerable  position. 
St  Paul's  counsel  does  rule  out  anarchy  and  misrule 
grounded  in  hatred,  while  it  leaves  untouched  that 
constructive  socialism  which  his  own  more  essential 
philosophy  has  done  so  much  to  encourage. 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          129 

There  are  several  other  passages  in  which  St  Paul 
treats  of  the  slave  question.  There  is  his  advice  to 
men  not  to  go  wandering  about,  but  to  abide  in  their 
calling  ;  even  if  they  are  slaves,  to  remember  that 
both  their  masters  and  themselves  are  God's  freed- 
men.  A  sentence  in  this  connection  about  obtaining 
one's  freedom  is  interpreted  variously  as  advice  not 
to  strive  for  this  freedom,  or  advice  to  gain  one's 
freedom  if  that  is  possible.  The  sense  cannot  at 
present  be  conclusively  determined.  It  is  of  course 
possible  that  St  Paul  believed  in  the  cataclysmic 
coming  of  God's  Kingdom  in  his  own  time,  in  a 
revolution  not  by  blood  but  by  miracle,  and  that  the 
business  of  the  Church  was  not  to  hasten  it  by 
violence,  but  to  be  on  the  watch,  and  merely  to  do 
the  best  they  could  under  the  present  evil  institutions. 
It  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  arrive  at  any  certainty 
on  this  point.  If  he  really  believed  this,  his  teaching 
as  to  slavery  would  be  adequately  explained.  In 
any  case,  I  cannot  agree  with  those  critics  who  would 
have  us  believe  that,  although  St  Paul's  teaching  was 
essentially  democratic,  it  made  no  actual  or  immediate 
difference  in  the  status  of  the  slave ;  for  although  he 
urged  slaves  to  work  heartily  as  unto  God,  he  urges 
their  masters  with  equal  emphasis  to  give  them  justice 
and  equality,  and  although  he  sends  back  a  runaway 
slave  to  his  master — both  slave  and  master  had 
become  Christians — he  orders  his  master,  very  court- 
eously but  authoritatively,  to  receive  him  into  his 
household  no  longer  as  a  slave,  but  as  one  of  the 
family,  a  brother  beloved.  He  implores  Philemon  to 
do  this  of  his  own  free  will  and  not  of  necessity,  but 

9 


1 30     SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  twenty-first  verse  of  the  Epistle  leaves  us  in  no 
doubt  that  it  was  not  mere  consent  but  obedience 
which  St  Paul  expected. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  in  every  great 
prophet's  teaching  there  are  ideas  of  eternal  validity 
and  temporal  application.  Individual  interpreters 
will  rightly  seek  to  distinguish  the  one  from  the 
other.  Moreover,  we  are  not  bound  by  St  Paul's 
ideas  alone,  nor  by  St  James,  nor  by  St  John.  It  is 
the  business  of  the  Christian  to  correct  the  concep- 
tions of  one  by  reference  to  those  of  another,  and, 
where  the  task  is  too  heavy  for  the  individual,  to 
appeal  to  that  consensus  of  individual  human  opinions 
which  we  call  Church  tradition. 

Now  if  one  reads  Christian  literature  widely  and  care- 
fully, one  may  here  and  there  find  passages  from  this 
or  that  authority  which  seem  to  rely  on  the  counsels 
of  St  Paul  for  the  support  of  autocracy  or  of  slavery. 
But  the  overwhelming  stream  of  Church  tradition 
made  in  the  direction  of  manumission  and  the  abolition 
of  slavery.  The  whole  Church — there  are  no  excep- 
tions— opposed  Aristotle's  essential  difference  between 
slaves  and  freemen,  holding  with  Seneca  and  Cicero 
that  all  men  are  by  nature  free  and  equal.  By  nature 
or  natural  law,  the  Church  understood  and  taught  a 
Golden  Age  in  which  God's  will  prevailed.  Most 
Church  writers  put  this  age  before  the  Fall ;  all  of 
them  believe  that  the  object  of  the  Christian  religion 
is  the  establishment  of  this  perfect  epoch  ;  all  of  them 
hold  that  the  Golden  Age  not  only  involves  the 
freedom  and  equality  of  men — the  later  pagan  philo- 
sophers preached  a  like  freedom  and  equality, — but 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          131 

that  such  freedom  involves  common  property  in  the 
essentials  of  life.  St  Augustine  would  seem  to  be 
the  only  original  thinker  who,  in  practice,  at  one  time 
held  a  reactionary  view  about  slaves.  In  one  passage 
of  his  writings  he  seems  to  suggest  that  slavery  comes 
upon  the  unfortunate,  not  because  of  their  misfortunes, 
but  because  of  their  sins.  It  is  hardly  likely  that 
modern  opponents  of  Church  socialism  will  assert  that 
all  South  American  slaves  were  in  bondage  because 
they  were  bad,  while  their  masters  were  free  because 
they  were  good ;  and  it  must  be  remembered  that 
St  Augustine's  thought  was  abnormal  and  eccentric, 
and  that  in  this  very  matter  he  speaks  with  no  certain 
voice,  for  in  another  passage  he  contends  that  slavery 
is  as  unnatural  as  sin,  and  that  no  one  may  own  a 
man  as  he  would  own  a  horse  or  money.  Gregory 
the  Great  is  fairly  representative  where  he  says : 
"  We  act  in  a  wholesome  fashion  if  by  manumission 
we  restore  men,  whom  from  the  beginning  nature 
brought  forth  free,  and  the  law  of  nations  subjected 
to  the  yoke  of  slavery,  to  that  liberty  in  which  they 
were  born." l 

It  is  very  significant  that  the  great  Christian  writers 
in  constructive  ages  of  Church  thought,  the  men  who 
are  generally  admitted  to  have  contributed  most  to  the 
upbuilding  of  Catholic  philosophy,  are  glad  to  dwell 
upon  what  I  have  called  the  eternal  democratic  con- 
ception in  the  teaching  of  various  Apostles;  while  less 
original  writers,  who  belong  to  more  stagnant  ages  and 
who  contribute  nothing  to  Catholic  development,  e.g. 
writers  of  the  ninth  century,  are  fond  of  seizing  upon 

1  Gregory,  Letters ',  bk.  vi.  f.  12. 


1 32      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  temporal  advice  of  either  Paul  or  Augustine,  and 
of  elevating  it  into  a  position  of  eternal  validity. 

In  the  matter  of  civil  authority  Christian  tradition 
speaks  with  no  very  certain  voice.  In  the  early  days, 
before  Christians  had  any  constitutional  rights,  some- 
times the  powers  that  be,  i.e.  the  Roman  Empire,  are 
treated  with  contempt,  at  other  times  the  Pauline 
view  is  upheld.  When  the  Emperors  began  to 
support  orthodoxy,  the  temptation  towards  a  theory 
of  Divine  right  naturally  increased ;  but  the  Church 
in  its  totality  cannot  be  said  ever  to  have  endorsed 
that  theory.  I  have  spoken  of  the  stagnant  ages  as 
contrasted  with  living  ages  that  contributed  to  the 
development  of  Christian  thought.  Roughly  speaking, 
we  may  say  that  the  first  five  centuries  showed  life 
and  movement,  and  that  the  same  life  and  movement 
are  visible  from  the  eleventh  century  to  the  end  of  the 
fourteenth ;  and  in  these  latter  centuries  the  great 
Churchmen  held  generally  that  kingship  and  civil 
government  have  their  source  in  what  may  be  called 
a  Divine  democracy.  It  seems  universally  to  be  held 
that  the  object  of  civil  government  is  the  establish- 
ment of  justice;  that  therefore  disobedience  to  the 
government  of  men  is  disobedience  to  the  God  of 
justice,  for  man  is  essentially  a  social  creature.  Men 
must  therefore  come  together  into  a  society,  and 
human  society  involves  some  form  of  government; 
therefore  Christians  were  inclined  to  think  highly  of 
the  State.  But  where  the  State  is  manifestly  evil  the 
tradition  becomes  uncertain;  some  of  the  Fathers 
counsel  obedience,  others  disobedience,  for  if  the 
object  of  government  be  justice,  apostasy  from  this 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          133 

object  absolves  the  people  from  their  allegiance. 
St  Ambrose,  in  the  fourth  century,  had  held  that  a 
priest  must  reprove  an  evil  ruler,  and  all  rulers  are 
within  and  not  over  the  Church.  He  put  his  theory 
into  practice  when  he  excommunicated  the  pious  and 
orthodox  Emperor,  excluding  him  from  the  Eucharist 
because  he  had  been  guilty  of  a  massacre. 

A  general  survey  of  the  teaching  of  the  Fathers 
appears,  then,  to  yield  the  result  that  they  are 
practically  unanimous  in  opposing  private  property 
in  the  essentials  of  life,  that  is,  in  land  and  in  any 
form  of  capital  used  for  the  purpose  of  extracting 
interest.  Ideally,  such  a  state  of  things  could  not 
exist ;  in  the  Golden  Age  to  which  they  all  looked 
forward  it  would  not  exist.  They  are  not  so  unani- 
mous in  their  practical  applications  of  the  socialistic 
theory.  Sometimes  the  immediate  advice  and  action 
of  certain  of  their  number  contradicts  their  unanimous 
conception  of  the  nature  of  the  Golden  Age.  On 
the  further  questions  of  government  and  slavery, 
tradition  speaks  with  less  certain  voice,  but  on  the 
whole  tends  to  democracy  and  abolitionism.1 

In  bringing  this  section  (Chapters  IV.  and  V.)  to 
a  conclusion,  it  may  be  well  to  deal  with  the  attempt 
of  a  writer  in  the  Economic  Review  of  April  1895  to 
defend  the  principles  of  modern  commercialism  from 
the  traditions  of  the  early  Church.  The  writer  quotes 
a  passage  from  Irenseus  aimed  at  that  bitter  and 
extreme  communism  of  certain  heretics  which  may 

1  Actual  body-slavery  died  out  of  Europe  from  the  sixth  to  the 
fourteenth  centuries.  It  was  revived  by  the  Portuguese  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  Negro  slavery  was  constantly  defended  by  reference  to  St 
Paul  in  Christo-capitalist  times. 


i34      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

be  likened  to  the  communism  with  which  modern 
newspapers  charge  the  socialist  of  the  present  day. 
The  passage  is  of  doubtful  interpretation,  for  Irenaeus 
holds1  that  we  should  refrain  from  demanding  our 
own  from  such  as  may  take  it.  The  writer  appears 
therefore  to  argue  that,  even  if  socialists  could  prove 
that  much  of  the  property  of  the  rich  rightfully 
belongs  to  the  poor,  the  poor  must  not  demand  it  of 
them  ;  but  his  own  contention  is,  that  the  property  of 
the  rich  is  really  their  own,  and  that  the  taxation  of 
the  rich,  by  means  of  socialistic  legislation,  is  little 
short  of  theft.  Now,  if  this  is  so,  and  if  he  still  insists 
on  the  authority  of  Irenaeus,  he  would  seem  to  have 
proved  too  much,  namely,  that  it  is  unchristian  in  the 
extreme  on  the  part  of  his  rich  friends  to  demand 
their  own  back  again  by  resisting  such  legislation. 

He  quotes  Justin  Martyr2  to  prove  that,  if  the 
Christians  contributed  to  a  common  store,  they  each 
put  in  only  a  little,  and  no  compulsion  was  used.  A 
man  gives  "  only  if  he  is  able,  for  no  man  is  obliged." 
But  what  does  the  writer  want  to  prove?  No  one  has 
said  that  compulsion  was  used.  Does  he  insist  that 
each  gave  as  little  as  he  decently  could  ?  But  the 
passage  seems  to  establish  exactly  the  contrary. 
They  were,  for  the  most  part,  poverty-stricken  slaves, 
so  that  each  could  only  give  a  trifle,  and  they  gave  as 
much  as  they  could.  He  deals  with  a  passage  from 
St  Chrysostom  with  no  better  success.  He  discovers 
that  the  saint  held  that  the  rich  man  is  a  steward  of 
the  common  property.  He  quotes  Clement  of  Rome 
as  saying,  "  Let  the  rich  minister  aid  to  the  poor,  and  let 

1  Irenseus,  Adv.  Hcer.^  lib.  ii.  cap.  32.  2  Justin,  ApoL,  i.  67. 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL          135 

the  poor  give  thanks  to  God,  because  He  has  given 
him  one  through  whom  his  wants  may  be  supplied," 
and  he  argues  that  here  is  a  proof  that,  according  to 
the  Fathers,  the  rich  man's  property  is  his  own.  If 
further  proof  is  wanted,  can  it  not  be  had  in  St 
Augustine's  sermon  on  the  text,  "  The  gold  is  Mine 
and  the  silver  is  Mine  ?  "  for  Austin  says,  "  Let  him  who 
is  unwilling  to  share  his  goods  with  the  poor,  under- 
stand when  he  hears  exhortation  to  show  mercy  that 
God  does  not  order  him  to  give  of  his  own,  but  of  that 
which  is  God's."  The  writer  seems  to  argue  that, 
because  this  author  asserts  that  a  man's  property  does 
not  belong  to  him,  he  really  considers  that  it  does. 
The  writer  does  not  seem  to  know  that  the  thought 
of  property  belonging  to  the  common  Father  of  all 
men,  and  the  thought  of  that  property  as  the  common 
heritage  of  all  His  children,  are  ideas  interchangeable 
in  the  traditions  of  the  early  Church. 

No  one  denies  the  point  that  he  is  labouring  to 
prove,  namely,  that  God  is  the  primal  owner  of  all 
things,  that  the  early  Church  considered  that  the  rich 
were  the  managers  through  whose  hands  the  common 
property  was  to  pass.  This  was  not  an  ideal  state  of 
things ;  the  ideal  state  was  the  Golden  Age  which 
knew  nothing  of  rich  and  poor ;  but  the  early  Church 
was  unable  to  see  any  other  way  out  of  the  present 
difficulty  than  this  liberal  dispensing  of  God's  property 
by  God's  managers.  But  when  this  writer  goes  on  to 
say  that  the  Fathers  never  breathe  a  hint  of  their 
latent  belief  that  society  was  wrongly  constituted,  he 
is  guilty  of  an  audacity  which  must  promptly  be 
challenged.  His  further  quotations  are  peculiarly 


136      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

unfortunate.  He  boldly  asserts  that  the  Fathers 
would  have  denounced  Proudhon's  maxim,  "  La 
propriete  c'est  le  vol."  But  we  soon  find  him  referring 
to  St  Ambrose  as  saying,  "  Nature  has  given  all  things 
to  all  men  in  common,  for  God  has  ordained  that  all 
things  shall  be  so  produced  that  food  shall  be  common 
to  all,  and  the  earth  as  it  were  the  common  possession 
of  all.  Nature  therefore  is  the  mother  of  common 
right,  appropriation1  (usurpatio)  of  private  right." 
He  further  quotes  Ambrose's  conclusion  that  we  are 
therefore  bound  to  help  one  another  and  "  to  put  all 
our  resources  into  one  heap  "  (in  media  omnes  utilitates 
ponere),  to  help  each  other  by  kindliness,  by  service, 
by  money,  etc.,  that  social  feeling  may  grow  and  no 
one  be  called  from  his  duty  even  by  fear  of  danger, 
but  that  each  may  go  on  his  way,  whether  of  prosperity 
or  of  adversity.  This  critic  of  Church  socialism  con- 
siders this  the  most  conclusive  passage  he  can  find  in 
support  of  his  case.  He  thinks  that  Ambrose  here 
has  supplied  a  strong  basis  for  individualistic  property. 
If  he  considers  that  urging  one  to  place  all  one's 
resources  into  one  heap  because  nature  and  God  have 
given  all  things  to  all  men  in  common  supplies  the 
best  possible  basis  for  individualistic  property,  I  do 
not  think  the  Christo-capitalists  will  thank  him  for 
having  entered  into  this  controversy.  If  his  great 
proof  that  the  Fathers  would  have  repudiated 
Proudhon's  "  Property  is  theft  "  rests  on  a  quotation 
from  one  of  them  which  asserts  that  theft  is  the 
mother  of  private  property,  I  fear  that  commercial 
individualism  will  have  to  seek  some  other  line  of 

1  ' '  Appropriation  "  is  a  curiously  mild  interpretation  of  the  term. 


THE  SOCIOLOGY  OF  ST  PAUL         137 

defence  than  the  appeal  to  Christian  history.  The 
fact  would  seem  to  be  that  the  writer  has  confused 
the  ancient  theory  of  alms-giving  with  the  modern. 
Nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  that  the  giving  of 
alms,  in  the  early  Christian  tradition,  was  always  con- 
sidered "  a  debt  of  justice."  It  was  of  obligation  ;  to 
refrain  from  it  was  to  act  as  a  thief;  to  give  alms  was 
to  distribute  among  the  poor  what  was  theirs  by  right. 
Chrysostom,  in  his  sermons  on  Dives  and  Lazarus,  is 
quite  explicit  upon  this  point.1  Stewardship  had  not 
come  to  mean  the  vague  thing  it  means  in  the  mouths 
of  the  modern  pulpiteers  ;  it  meant  stewardship.  The 
rich  man  was  steward  of  God's  estate  just  as  a  land 
steward  is  administrator  of  a  landlord's  property,  or  a 
bank  clerk  administrator  of  the  property  of  the  bank 
owners.  The  clerk  receives  a  salary  which  is  supposed 
to  supply  him  with  the  necessaries  of  life;  the  rich 
man  might  take  a  salary  as  wages  of  administration 
to  supply  him  with  necessities.  If  he  took  more, 
or  refused  to  disburse  the  property,  he  was  considered 
by  unanimous  Church  tradition  to  be  no  better  than 
a  common  thief.  We  may  sum  up  the  situation 
by  a  quotation  from  a  studiously  moderate  non- 
socialist  authority,  Professor  Ashley.  Commenting 
on  Clement's  saying  that  it  is  only  by  injustice  that 
private  property  arises,  since  God  meant  property  to 
be  common  among  men,  he  writes : — 

This  view  as  to  the  origin  of  property  gave  Christian 
moralists  a  philosophical  basis  for  their  teaching.  To  seek 
to  enrich  one's  self  was  not  simply,  they  could  argue,  to 

1  Cf.  also  quotations  from  Ambrose,  Ambrosiaster,  etc.  in  previous 
chapter. 


138      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

incur  spiritual  risk  to  one's  own  soul ;  it  was  in  itself  unjust, 
since  it  aimed  at  appropriating  an  unfair  share  of  what  God 
had  intended  for  the  common  use  of  men.  If  a  man 
possessed  more  than  he  needed,  he  was  bound  to  give  his 
superfluity  to  the  poor ;  for  by  natural  law  he  had  no 
personal  right  to  it ;  he  was  only  a  steward  for  God.  And 
with  Christian  teachers  such  injunctions  were  no  longer  mere 
philosophical  deductions ;  they  came  with  all  the  weight  of 
practical  precepts,  pointing  to  duties  to  be  observed  and  sins 
to  be  avoided  on  pain  of  punishment  in  another  world. 1 

There  is  therefore  no  case  to  be  made  on  behalf  of 
modern  plutocracy  and  commercialism  by  pressing  the 
theory  of  stewardship,  for,  according  to  that  theory,  the 
plutocrat  who  retains  a  penny  more  than  that  which 
suffices  to  maintain  him  in  the  necessaries  of  life  is  a 
worse  kind  of  thief  than  the  poor  clerk  who  robs  the 
till ;  and  this  is  hardly  what  the  writer  wanted  to  prove. 
Our  modern  critics  are  never  tired  of  telling  us  that 
we  are  not  bound  by  the  letter,  but  only  by  the  spirit, 
of  Scripture  and  ancient  tradition.  There  is  no  reason- 
able doubt  that  the  spirit  of  both  does  commit  us  to  a 
belief  in  God  the  common  Father  dispensing  the  earth 
and  its  products  to  all  men  alike.  The  theory  of  the 
stewardship  of  the  rich  is  much  more  akin  to  the 
letter  of  socialism  than  it  is  to  the  letter  of  commercial 
plutocracy,  but  it  is  in  itself  just  as  much  the  temporary 
letter  or  form  of  the  Church's  eternal  conception  of 
common  property  as  were,  for  instance,  the  Jewish 
land  laws.  We  may  therefore  suggest  that  a  new 
form  is  developing  in  our  own  day  which  more  ade- 
quately safeguards  and  expresses  the  Church's  essen- 
tial idea  of  common  ownership  than  did  this  letter  of 
stewardship :  that  form  is  socialism. 

1  Ashley,  Economic  History  and  Theory. 


VI 

THE  SACRAMENTS 

The  philosophy  of  socialism  restated — Nature  and  universality  of  sacra- 
ments— The  sacramentalism  of  Christ  and  the  poets — Sacraments 
of  nature  and  of  grace — The  sacraments  of  creation,  incarnation, 
and  the  Church — Of  baptismal  regeneration  and  the  sacrament  of 
confirmation — The  human  priest  and  the  functions  of  priesthood — 
Confession  and  absolution — Holy  Orders  and  the  Divine  democracy 
— Confirmation  and  the  Eucharist  as  an  offering — Body  and  soul  in 
the  Eucharist — The  sacrament  of  God's  Body  as  the  sacrament  of 
fellowship — The  holy  communion  in  the  early  Church — Havelock 
Ellis  on  the  sacrament  of  food — Unction  and  healing — Marriage 
as  the  mirror  of  the  family  of  God — George  Meredith  and  Robert 
Blatchford  on  the  sacrament  of  marriage — Dante's  Rose  of  Souls. 


VI 

THE   SACRAMENTS 

The  sacraments  of  the  Church  are  witness  "that  the  unreal  spiritu- 
ality which  exists  in  a  barren  and  boastful  disparagement  of  ritual 
observances  or  of  outward  acts,  of  earthly  relationships  or  of  secular 
life,  of  material  feelings  or  of  bodily  health,  clashes  with  Christian 
teaching  as  sharply  as  it  does  with  nature  and  with  common  sense." — 
Lux  Mundi)  I3th  edition,  p.  310. 

SOCIALISM  derives  its  enthusiasm  from  a  conception 
of  justice  which  challenges  our  industrial  chaos,  Tnd 
demands  the  abolition  of  slaves  and  drones  and  the 
reconstruction  of  an  international  commonwealth  of 
workers.  Behind  its  demands  are  discovered  certain 
axioms,  assumptions,  doctrines  about  the  nature^and 
destiny  of  man,  its  two  dominant  doctrines  being 
concerned  with  the  body  and  the  fellowship. 

(i)  Concerning  the  body:  That  outward,  sensuous, 
material,  physical  things  count.  That  to  treat  man's 
body  as  vile  or  of  no  account,  is  to  injure  man  and 
to  misread  his  nature;  to  ignore  man's  physical  needs 
is  sacrilege  ;  to  recognise  the  importance  of  material 
considerations  is  not  to  be  a  "  mere  materialist " ; 
although  man  does  not  live  by  bread  alone,  he  does 
live  by  bread  ;  physical  desires — the  instinct  for  food 
and  drink,  the  sex  instinct,  the  instinct  for  warmth 
and  shelter — are  not  evil  but  good. 

141 


142      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

(2)  Concerning  the  fellowship :  That  the  individual 
is  not  redeemed,  saved,  built  up  into  rich  and  generous 
personality  in  isolation,  but  in  fellowship.  Every 
socialist  at  once  understands  the  philosophic  truth 
underlying  the  phrase,  "  Extra  Ecclesiam  nulla  salus." 
The  socialist  dogmas  are  paralleled  theologically  by 
the  dogmas  of  creation,  incarnation,  bodily  resurrec- 
tion, the  dogmas  of  the  Communion  of  Saints  and 
of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  and  find  their  full 
expression  in  the  sacraments  of  the  Church. 

The  Holy  Spirit,  that  "  Light  of  every  man  coming 
into  the  world,"  has  prompted  the  use  of  sacraments 
in  many  parts  of  the  pre-Christian  world  and  in 
varying  religions,  as  testify  the  ancient  cults  of 
Greeks,  Egyptians,  and  Romans,  the  later  religion  of 
Mithraism,  and  the  present  Brahmanic  rituals.  Sacra- 
ment was  by  the  early  Christians  understood  to  mean 
"anything  sensuous  whereby  something  holy  might 
be  thought  or  enjoyed"  (Harnack).  It  came  to 
signify  an  outward  visible  sign  of  inward  spiritual 
grace  given  or  presence  conveyed ;  but  the  sign  or 
"  matter  "  is  called  "  effectual,"  because  it  does  not  arbi- 
trarily remind  us  of  the  grace  signified,  but  effectually 
expresses  and  conveys  it.  A  cup  symbolises  drinking. 
A  red  flag  symbolises  danger ;  but  facial  expression 
is  not  only  symbol  but  sacrament,  in  that  it  effectu- 
ally expresses  or  conveys  the  personality  behind  it. 

At  first  the  number  of  sacraments  was  indeter- 
minate. They  are  numbered  sometimes  as  three, 
sometimes  as  eight,  fifteen,  or  even  thirty.  Mystics 
have  believed  that  Christ  spoke  sacramentally  in 
saying,  "  I  am  the  Bread,  I  am  the  Vine,  I  am  the 


THE  SACRAMENTS  143 

Door,"  in  that  He  is  in  very  truth  the  Bread,  the 
Vine,  the  Door,  of  which  every  visible  and  tangible 
loaf,  vintage,  archway  is  the  more  or  less  effectual 
expression.  The  poets  speak  of  flowers  as  suggesting 
thoughts  that  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears,1  of  the 
flower  in  the  crannied  wall  as  microcosm  of  God  and 
man,2  of  God's  holy  sacrament  of  spring,3  of  the  way- 
side sacraments  of  our  hedgerows.4  Poets  and  mystics 
understand  that  God  is  really  present  to  bless  men 
under  forms  of  bread,  wine,  oil,  salt,  flowers,  water, 
fruit ;  that  the  colour  of  the  tulip,  the  scent  of  the 
rose,  the  sound  of  the  sea,  the  grace  and  symmetry 
of  the  human  body,  are  effectual  signs  of  the  presence 
of  the  God  who  prevents  and  follows  and  enfolds  us, 
as  the  waters  cover  the  sea. 

All  sacraments  of  nature  and  of  grace  take  their 
rise  in  the  sacrament  of  Creation,  for  these  worlds 
are  "the  form  whereby  the  beauty  of  God's  mind 
manifests  itself"  (F.  W.  Robertson),  but  the  sacra- 
ment of  sun  and  moon,  of  sea  and  earth,  of  bird 
and  beast  is  not  complete  without  the  sacrament 
of  man  made  in  the  very  image  of  God.  And  again, 
it  is  only  perfect  man  who  perfectly  images  God, 
for  in  us  His  image  is  blurred  and  distorted.  The 
human  race  but  imperfectly  expresses  God,  until 
there  springs  from  its  loins  the  perfect  being,  the 
very  man  of  very  man,  the  very  God  of  very  God. 

The  second  fundamental  sacrament  is  therefore  the 
Incarnation  of  Jesus  Christ.  Other  men  are  sacra- 
mental ordinances.  This  Man  is  the  Sacrament  of  the 
Gospel.  Others  are  incoherent,  unrelated,  inarticulate 

1  Wordsworth.       2  Tennyson.       3  Roden  Noel.       4  Kingsley. 


144      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

letters  of  God's  alphabet,  till  they  are  pieced  together, 
giving  meaning  and  tongue  in  the  Verbum  Dei,  the 
Eternal  Word  of  God,  the  intelligible  language  of 
man,  first-fruit  of  the  human  harvest,  Crown  and 
Consummation  of  this  sumptuous  world. 

In  Him  is  revealed  the  Kingdom  or  Commonwealth 
of  God  as  object  and  ground  of  our  creation,  as  the 
home  of  mankind,  as  the  reality  to  which  men  must 
come.  Until  they  enter  into  the  conception  of  this 
Commonwealth,  and  seek  to  actualise  it  in  their 
midst,  they  are  dead ;  so  long  as  they  wage  their 
dreary  wars  and  nourish  their  infidel  suspicions,  they 
possess  a  death-in-life  existence,  but  they  have  not 
begun  to  live.  If  they  are  to  enter  into  the  life  which 
the  Very  Man  has  come  to  give  them,  and  to  give 
them  more  abundantly,  they  must  renounce  "  this 
age,"  "this  world,"  this  satanic  ideal  of  separation, 
schism,  mistrust,  strife,  competition,  and  be  translated 
into  the  Age  of  Reality,  the  life  to  come  which  even 
now  is,  into  the  Kingdom  of  God's  dear  Son.  Stretch- 
ing up  their  hands  towards  God's  dream  or  Heaven, 
or  ideal,  they  must  seize  upon  it,  and  drag  it  down 
out  of  Heaven,  and  plant  it  firmly  in  the  secular  soil 
of  this  material  world. 

United  we  stand,  divided  we  fall.  No  one,  individu- 
ally and  in  isolation,  can  fully  accomplish  God's 
purpose  ;  therefore  the  Christian  watchword  is  associ- 
ation, and  the  Christ  proclaims,  "  I  will  build  My 
Church."  So  we  come  to  the  third  fundamental 
sacrament,  with  its  outward  and  visible  sign,  the 
Church,  and  its  inward  spiritual  significance,  the 
Kingdom  of  God.  "  I  will  build  My  Church,"  that  in 


THE   SACRAMENTS  145 

a  visible  society,  pledged  to  exterminate  the  Devil 
and  all  his  works,  man  may  bring  into  outward  act 
God's  inward  fact,  the  fact  of  the  Commonwealth 
which  underlies  our  existence,  and  so  translate  the 
cruel,  competitive  kingdom  of  "  this  age "  into  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  His  Christ. 

The  man  who  begins  to  understand  the  sacraments 
of  Creation,  Incarnation,  and  the  Church  can  never 
igain  reject  as  "  merely  secular  "  the  tangible,  audible, 
visible  expression  of  a  people's  soul  in  laws,  houses, 
wharfs,  ways,  harbours,  gesture,  dress,  drama,  songs, 
or  language.  He  perceives  the  bond  between  inward 
and  outward,  and  rejecting  the  half-truth  heresies  of 
spiritualism  and  materialism,  pleads,  "  What  God  hath 
joined  together,  let  no  man  put  asunder."  The  claims 
of  the  senses  and  the  need  of  political  regeneration 
are  involved  in  the  sacramental  basis,  for  to  starve 
men's  bodies  is  to  rob  the  Holy  Ghost,  whose  temples 
they  are. 

There  have  been  rare  moments  in  the  Church's 
history  when  Christ  might  have  taken  the  visible 
fellowship  or  body  into  His  holy  and  venerable 
hands,  saying,  "  This  is  my  Body  " ;  such  a  moment 
there  was  when  "  the  multitude  of  them  that  believed 
were  of  one  heart  and  of  one  soul ;  neither  said  any 
of  them  that  ought  of  the  things  which  he  possessed 
was  his  own,  but  they  had  all  things  in  common.  .  .  . 
Great  grace  was  upon  them  all,  neither  was  there  any 
that  lacked." l 

Baptism  in  Christ's  time  was  the  act  by  which  the 
Gentiles  were  regenerated  by  translation  from  pagan 

1  Acts  iv.  32  ff. 

10 


146      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

customs  and  beliefs  into  the  environment  of  the 
Jewish  commonwealth.  Sponsors  further  emphasised 
the  social  character  of  this  re-birth  into  a  new  people 
and  tradition. 

Christian  baptism  is  the  gate  into  Christ's  Church, 
and  claims  every  human  being  brought  to  the  font, 
irrespective  of  race  or  colour,  although  seemingly  a 
child  of  nature,  of  an  under-world  "  red  in  tooth  and 
claw,"  enmeshed  in  the  wrathful  ape-and-tiger  disorder, 
as  child  of  God  and  property  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The 
baptized  person  is  hereby  brought  into  the  society 
which  is  pledged  by  institution,  traditions,  creeds, 
gospels,  sacraments  to  destroy  the  separate  sub- 
human kingdoms  of  earth,  and  to  establish  the  human 
kingdom  of  grace.  Thrust  by  our  first  birth  into  the 
isolation  of  a  disordered  world,  where  "  each  for  him- 
self" is  the  watchword,  we  are  hereby  given  a  new 
birth,  a  new  start,  a  new  enthusiasm  ;  being  claimed 
as  children  of  grace,  and  for  the  life  of  God's 
Commonwealth. 

But,  say  the  critics,  of  what  use  is  this  re-birth, 
when  you  are,  as  a  fact,  grafted  into  the  inertia  of 
Laodicea,  into  the  deadly  complacency  of  Slowcombe- 
on-the-Marsh,  into  a  small  coterie  of  self-conscious 
Britishers,  shallow  Italians,  or  superstitious  Spaniards  ? 
Scarcely  do  modern  parishes  care  about  the  establish- 
ment of  God's  Kingdom  ;  what  even  do  they  care 
about  the  children  re-born  into  their  midst,  as  witness 
the  post-Reformation  scandal  of  solitary  baptism, 
which  bids  fair  to  eclipse  the  pre  -  Reformation 
scandal  of  solitary  masses  ?  The  baptismal  rites 
always  contemplate  the  presence  of  God's  local  family 


THE   SACRAMENTS  147 

to  welcome  the  new  member.  Baptism  in  early  times 
was  the  greatest  of  social  functions.  Our  hole-and- 
corner  celebrations  of  it  throughout  Europe  are 
witness  of  our  apostasy.  If  the  tree  be  dead,  what 
chance  of  life  has  the  engrafted  twig?  If  the 
immediate  parish  be  apostate,  avaricious,  pharisaic, 
the  immediate  soil  choked  with  stones  and  weeds, 
God's  scheme  of  the  "  common  salvation  "  through 
that  interplay  of  gracious  souls  is  altogether  thwarted. 

This  is  all  appallingly  true,  but  it  is  also  true  that 
the  grafting  in  of  each  new  member  brings  a  possi- 
bility of  renewed  vigour  to  the  local  Church,  and 
that,  in  spite  of  the  worst  periods  and  most  lifeless 
localities,  we  are  baptized  into  something  beyond  the 
immediate  period  and  environment.  True  though  it 
is  that  for  some  time  the  apostasy  of  a  local  Church 
may  thwart  God's  scheme,  it  is  also  true  that  the 
fulness  of  the  first  century  may  supply  the  deficiencies 
of  the  twentieth,  or  the  vigour  of  the  twentieth  the 
meagreness  of  some  century  past  or  future;  the 
sanity  of  one  may  counteract  the  superstition  of 
another ;  the  wisdom  of  one  may  counteract  the 
worldliness  of  another  ;  the  spirituality  of  one  the 
pharisaism  of  another.  We  are  not  baptized  into 
Paul  or  Apollos,  into  the  head  of  this  or  that  sect  or 
Church,  but  into  Jesus  Christ  and  the  whole  company 
of  Catholic  men,  the  living  and  the  dead,  nourished 
by  the  rites,  sacraments,  gospels,  traditions  of  the 
living  Church,  limbs  of  the  new  Adam,  regenerate 
men,  heirs  of  all  the  ages. 

The  character  of  Confirmation  is  essentially  social. 
Fifth  and  twentieth  century  theologians  alike  explain 


148      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

it  as  conveying  to  the  confirmed  his  right  in  the 
royal  and  priestly  body.  In  "  orders  "  and  "  confirma- 
tion "  anointing  is  often  used.  There  is  the  laying  on 
of  the  hands  of  the  bishop  in  both  cases ;  in  both 
cases  the  grace  of  God's  Spirit  is  the  gift  to  be  con- 
veyed. The  newly  ordained  priest  celebrates ;  the 
newly  confirmed  priest  assists  by  communicating,  and 
by  the  assent  of  the  "Amen"  at  the  close  of  the 
consecration  prayer. 

Baptism  declares  the  true  childhood  of  all,  and 
effectualises  it  by  placing  men  within  an  effective 
society ;  confirmation  declares  the  true  priesthood  of 
all,  and  effectualises  it  by  admitting  men  to  the 
priestly  sacrament  of  God's  Board. 

For  men  are  not  only  God's  children  but  His  priests, 
bound  to  sacrifice,  bound  to  absolve ;  confess  one  to 
another  ;  forgive  one  another  ;  have  charity,  believing 
all  things,  enduring  all  things,  hoping  all  things  of  one 
another.  Mutual  confidence  must  supplant  division 
and  distrust.  A  fund  of  energy  is  generated  by  God's 
belief  in,  and  absolution  of,  men,  and  men's  forgiveness 
one  of  another.  Man,  as  Mr  Stewart  Headlam  says, 
is  "  bound  perpetually  to  be  the  priest  in  absolution." 

The  sacrament  of  Penance,  a  wise  development  of 
this  earlier  belief,  in  the  universal  obligation  of  mutual 
forgiveness,  is  an  exceptional  focussing  of  that  natural 
confession  and  absolution  which  is  obligatory  on  the 
whole  human  race.  Until  at  least  the  year  250, 
cases  of  discipline  were  settled  by  all  the  people,  and 
scandals  confessed  before  the  whole  priestly  company 
of  the  faithful ;  some  authorities  go  further — possibly 
too  far — in  declaring  the  primitive  custom  to  have 


THE  SACRAMENTS  149 

been  a  public  confession  of  sins  before  each  act  of 
communion. 

Undoubtedly  the  orthodox  Christian  view  has  always 
been  that  vice,  however  secret,  is  anti-social,  frittering 
away  the  energy  consecrated  to  the  service  of  God's 
body,  humanity.  All  sin  is  threefold — against  God, 
society,1  oneself.  Forgiveness  must  also  be  threefold. 

"  Holy  Orders "  is  the  rite  by  which  certain 
members  of  the  priestly  body  are  set  aside  by  its 
chief  officer  as  sacramental  organs  of  the  whole. 
The  Ordinals  do  not  say,  "  Become  now  a  Priest," 
but,  "  Receive  thou  the  Office  of  Priest."  Conceive  of 
the  anarchy  of  a  thousand  people  celebrating  the 
sacrament,  each  at  the  altar  of  his  own  particular 
fancy ;  conceive  the  laxity  of  a  community  in  which 
none  were  appointed  as  guardians  of  and  witnesses 
to  the  obligation  of  absolution,  and  you  will  under- 
stand the  value  of  discipline  and  delegation  which  we 
call  "  Holy  Orders."  For  slipshod  anarchy  and 
unbrotherly  schism  are  indeed  an  unholy  disorder. 
Just  as  in  the  Jewish  kingdom  the  sacerdotal  func- 
tions of  "  a  nation  of  priests "  were  focussed  in  the 
Holy  Order  of  the  Aaronic  line,  so  the  "  difference 
between  priests  and  laity  is  a  difference  in  function, 
not  in  kind,2  for  the  Holy  Communion  is  an  act  of 
the  whole  body  through  its  organ  and  mouthpiece, 
the  ordained  priest.  "  We  break  the  bread,"  "  We 
bless  the  cup,"  says  St  Paul ;  "  We  offer,  we  sacrifice," 
repeat  the  liturgies.  "  No  priest  says,  I  offer,  but,  We 
offer,  in  the  person  of  the  whole  Church"  (Peter 

1  Therefore,  of  course,  confession  to  man  is  obligatory  and  essential. 

2  Cf.  Gore,  Church  and  Ministry,  and  his  Body  of  Christ. 


150      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Lombard).  "Sometimes  there  is  no  difference 
between  priest  and  people,  e.g.  when  we  partake  of 
the  awful  mysteries  "  (Chrysostom). 

In  old  times  theologians  often  declared  that  a  layman 
cast  on  some  desert  island  might  consecrate  blades  of 
grass  and  so  feed  on  God's  presence  in  the  Eucharist. 
Theologians  insist  on  the  validity  but  irregularity  of  lay 
baptism  where  necessity  demands,  or  a  baptism  of  blood 
in  the  case  of  martyrs,  or  a  baptism  of  sand  in  the  case 
of  dying  travellers,  or  even  of  an  auto-baptism  of  de- 
sire where  matter  and  minister  are  alike  unprocurable. 
So  also  sacramental  confession  to  laymen  was  some- 
times urged.  Cyprian,  Origen,  Lombard,  Aquinas  all 
defend  it,  in  exceptional  cases,  and  Catholic  bishops 
have  ordered  it,  in  cases  of  plague  or  pestilence.1 

The  first  duty  of  priesthood,  then,  is  forgiveness  ; 
and  the  power  to  forgive  resides  in  humanity  and  is 
focussed  in  ordained  ministers.  The  second  duty  is 
sacrifice,  for  men  must  consecrate  body,  mind,  and 
spirit  to  God  in  the  service  of  the  God-infused 
community.  Therefore  the  confirmed,  their  priest- 
hood being  acknowledged,  are  admitted  to  the 
Blessed  Sacrament,  and  there  offer  themselves,  their 
souls  and  bodies  as  pledge  of  their  determination 
to  live  the  good  life  of  the  Commonwealth. 

But  in  the  Eucharist,  it  may  be  objected,  we  offer 
not  ourselves  but  Christ.  Yet  in  our  own,  the 
Roman,  and  primitive  liturgies  this  offering  of 
ourselves  is  made  prominent.  There  is  in  reality 

1  Cf.  a  R.C.  handbook  to  Rome,  Eccles.,  vol.  ii.  (Black),  1807; 
cf.  Gore,  Body  of  Christ,  pp.  330-331  ;  cf.  Pullan's  Prayer  Book, 
Oxf.  Lib.  ed.,  p.  206. 


THE  SACRAMENTS  151 

no  contradiction  between  the  two  offerings  ;  for  if 
"  the  Christ  in  me  "  be  the  hope  of  glory,  the  light 
that  lights  every  man  on  his  entrance  into  the 
world,  the  better  self,  the  self  unto  which  we  come 
when  we  arise  and  go  to  the  Father,  the  first-fruit  of 
the  human  harvest,  the  pledge  of  the  best  that  is  in 
us,  of  all  we  may  become,  then  to  offer  ourselves 
apart  from  the  God  in  us  would  be  to  offer  our  sins 
and  not  ourselves — an  offering  of  an  unnatural, 
subhuman,  ape-and-tiger  "  not-ourselves."  So  we 
present  before  the  Father  the  very  Man,  the  very 
ground  of  our  being  and  the  very  assurance  of  our 
liberation,  and  in  this  presentation  we  offer  Him  our 
very  selves,  our  very  souls,  our  very  bodies. 

Our  bodies,  it  will  be  noticed,  are  included  in  the 
offering  (see  also  the  words  of  administration  and 
Prayer  of  Humble  Access),  and  the  sanctity  of  material 
things  is  an  even  more  prominent  note  in  the  earlier 
Christian  liturgies,  in  which  "the  Meal"1  (as  it  is 
still  called  in  Russia)  is  treated  as  in  itself  sacrificial. 
The  sacrifice  is  seen  in  the  offering  to  God  of  the 
simple  fruits  of  the  earth,  represented  by  bread  and 
wine — •"  a  veritable  consecration  of  old  dead  matter 
itself  somehow  redeemed  at  last."  2  Our  own  Church, 
in  restoring  this  idea  of  a  reasonable  sacrifice  and 
developing  it,  would  seem  to  repudiate  the  fifteenth- 
century  idea  of  sacrifice  as  tribute  for  sin  offered 
by  a  priestly  caste,  not  as  mouthpiece  of,  but  in 
substitution  for,  the  whole  people. 

1  It  is  possible  that  the  term  "  Mass"  had  originally  the  meaning 
of  meal. 

2  Cf.  Pater's  Marius  the  Epicurean. 


152      SOCIALISM  IN   CHURCH  HISTORY 

It  is  significant,  as  bearing  upon  our  two  doctrines 
of  the  body  and  of  fellowship,  that  Gospels  and 
Church  should  promise  some  special  manifestation 
of  the  everywhere-present  God  when  "two  or  three 
are  gathered  together  in  My  name,"  and  an  even 
more  complete  manifestation  in  this  pre-eminently 
social  feast  with  its  material  symbols  and  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  common  table.  So  dominant  was  the 
communal  aspect  of  the  Eucharist  in  the  early  ages, 
that  the  "  This  is  My  Body  "  is  sometimes  interpreted 
as  meaning  the  people  gathered  together  into  a 
compact  brotherhood,  for  Christ  is  to  be  found  in  the 
body  of  men.  and  fellowship  is  heaven  and  the  lack 
of  fellowship  is  hell  (the  mediaeval  motto).  St  Paul 
reproves  the  Corinthians  for  their  individualistic 
selfishness,  "their  avarice  which  is  idolatry,"  their 
separateness,  turning  the  sacrament  instituted  as 
sign  of  fellowship  to  "  their  own  damnation,"  "  not 
discerning  the  Lord's  Body  "  ;  for  the  bread,  he  reminds 
them,  is  the  "fellowship  of  His  Body,  the  cup  the 
fellowship  of  His  Blood."  "  For  one  loaf,  one  body, 
we  the  many  are ;  for  all  of  us  partake  of  the  one 
loaf."1  Our  Prayer  Book  insists  on  this  aspect  in 
demanding  that  in  preparation  for  communion  we 
must  be  in  love  and  charity  with  our  neighbours. 
Our  homilies  call  the  sacrament  "the  strait  knot  of 
charity,"  and  urge  that  abstention  from  the  common 
feast  is  unbrotherliness,  and  the  partaking  of  the  feast 
will  only  "increase  our  damnation,"  unless  we  are 
just  as  ready  to  procure  our  neighbour's  health  of 
soul,  wealth,  commodity,  and  pleasure  as  our  own. 
1  St  Paul. 


THE  SACRAMENTS  153 

"  Examine  therefore  and  try  thy  good  will  towards 
the  children  of  God  and  towards  that  excellent 
creature,  thine  own  soul."  Holy  communion  bears 
witness  to  and  has  its  root  in  the  deep  philosophic 
truth  that  in  God  "all  things  hold  together"  (St 
Paul),  and  "  there  is  no  object  in  the  range  of  being 
which  does  not  in  some  way  partake  in  the  ONE 
who  embraced  all  things  from  the  first  in  one  single 
existence,  ...  in  the  unity  which  permeates  all 
things."1  This  thought  dominates  the  traditions  of 
the  Church,  and  in  its  light  is  interpreted  the 
Eucharist.  "  For  as  this  bread  was  scattered  upon 
the  mountains,  and  having  been  gathered  together 
became  one,  so  also,  O  Lord,  gather  together  Thy 
Holy  Church  from  every  race  and  country  and  city 
and  village  and  household,  and  make  it  a  living 
Catholic  Church."2  Even  as  late  as  1550,  the 
Anglican  theologian  Lever  writes :  "  As  of  divers 
corns  of  wheat  the  liquor  of  water  knoden  into 
dough  is  made  one  loaf  of  bread,  so  divers  men,  by 
love  and  charity,  which  is  the  liquor  of  life,  joined 
into  one  congregation,  being  made  as  divers  members 
of  one  mystical  body  of  Christ;  whereby  I  say  as 
one  example  in  the  stead  of  many,  learn  that  the 
more  gorgeous  you  yourselves  be  in  silks  and  velvets, 
the  more  shame  it  is  for  you  to  see  others  poor  and 
needy — being  members  of  the  same  body." 

At  first  the  social  character  of  the  Eucharist  was 
made  plainer  by  its  association  with  the  love  feasts, 

1  Dionysius,  quoted  by  Westcott  in  Religious  Thought  in  the  West. 

2  Liturgy  of  Sarapion,  Prayer  of  Oblation  ;  cf.  Cyp.  Ep.t  Ixxiii.  13; 
cf.  The  Didache  and  the  Apostolic  Constitutions. 


154      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

of  which  it  was  often  the  culmination.  Consider  how 
frequently  Christ  connects  meals  with  religion,  and 
thus  warns  against  a  false  spirituality. 

A  great  supper  is  used  as  a  symbol  of  His  Kingdom. 
Emphasis  is  laid  on  meals  eaten  with  His  followers. 
His  ideal  is  that  "  ye  may  all  eat  and  drink  in  My 
Kingdom."  He  is  made  known  to  friends  "in  the 
breaking  of  bread."  Both  early  opponents  and 
apologists  testify  to  the  ideal  of  communion  as 
shown  in  the  common  meals  of  the  early  Christians, 
where  master  and  slave  met  as  equals.  Chrysostom 
speaks  of  the  common  tables  set  up  in  the  very 
churches ;  so  from  fellowship  in  eating  and  reverence 
of  the  place,  "  men  learnt  to  live  in  charity  one  with 
the  other."  Clement  speaks  of  the  love  feast  and 
Eucharist  as  that  "  sacrament  of  neighbourly  love," 
so  that  "  he  who  eats  of  this  meal  shall  acquire  the 
Kingdom  of  God,"  for  the  God  of  fellowship  is 
present  in  the  social  eating  of  the  nourishing  bread 
and  drinking  of  the  generous  wine. 

In  early  times  each  city  would  appear  to  have  had 
but  one  altar  and  one  communion,  one  single  act  of 
worship  for  the  whole  local  body.  Ignatius  urges 
men  to  observe  "one  Eucharist."  An  interesting 
comment  on  this  is  the  practice  of  the  early  Roman 
Church,  for  in  Rome  the  bishop  alone  celebrated  at 
the  single  altar  of  the  central  church;  no  other 
Eucharists  were  allowed,  and  when  the  Christian 
population  grew  too  great  for  the  one  church,  and 
daughter  churches  arose,  Eucharists  were  not  multi- 
plied, but  portions  of  the  consecrated  elements  were 
conveyed  by  deacons  from  one  altar  to  the  various 


THE   SACRAMENTS  155 

congregations.  So  the  Mass  witnesses,  as  is  pointed 
out  by  a  great  scientist,  himself  an  agnostic,  to  the 
Divine  mystery  of  food,1  for  in  this  meal  we  realise 
the  present  God  as  ground  both  of  the  most  exalted 
and  spiritual  emotions  and  of  the  common  materials 
of  physical  existence;  the  processes  of  bodily  sus- 
tenance are  Divine,  for  at  the  back  of  them  is  the  Divine 
Spirit.  The  common,  despised,  simple  material  things 
went  indeed  to  form,  and  actually  became,  Christ's 
Body,  that  Body  transmuted  and  glorified  by  His 
Divine  will,  and  He  would  teach  us  so  to  consecrate  our 
physical  life,  the  materials  of  our  bodily  sustenance,  in 
the  service  of  God  and  Commonwealth  that  even  the 
bodies  of  our  bondage  may  become  like  to  His  glorious 
Body,  and  our  souls  and  bodies  may  be  preserved  unto 
fulness  of  life.  May  this  not  be  the  meaning  of  St 
Augustine's  famous  eucharistic  utterance,  "  Be  what 
you  see,  and  receive  what  you  are  ?  " 

There  are  two  other  rites  commonly  called  sacra- 
ments in  the  historic  Churches  of  Christendom.  One 
of  them,  namely,  Unction,  has  unfortunately  fallen 
into  disuse  in  the  English  Church,  although  the 
Lambeth  Conference  of  1908  makes  some  attempt  to 
revive  it. 

But  even  in  the  present  Roman  rite  there  is  a 
beautiful  recognition  of  the  body  and  its  function,  for 
the  dying  man  is  anointed  on  eyes,  ears,  nostrils,  lips, 
hands,  feet,  on  all  the  avenues  of  sense,  while  the 
priest  pleads  to  the  most  tender  and  merciful  God 
that  the  penitent  may  be  forgiven  sins  of  the  lips 
and  eyes  and  of  other  sensuous  organs.  Although 
1  Havelock  Ellis,  The  New  Spirit. 


156      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  hope  of  recovery  finds  a  place  in  the  accompany- 
ing prayers,  it  has  been  deposed  from  its  dominant 
position  in  the  earlier  rites.  For  unction  in  reality 
was  a  sacrament  of  healing,  administered  not  at  the 
close  but  at  the  beginning  of  an  illness,  and  was  a 
witness  to  bodily  health  as  the  will  of  God  for  the 
human  race,  and  outward  sign  of  the  sacredness  of 
the  body  and  for  the  hope  of  recovery.  Could  the 
Christians  who  composed  this  prayer  have  sneered  at 
the  material  world  ?  In  the  Gregorian  Sacramentary 
we  read :  "  Send  forth,  O  Lord,  from  the  heavens 
Thy  Holy  Paraclete  into  the  fatness  of  the  olive 
which  Thou  hast  deigned  to  bring  forth  out  of  the 
green  tree  for  the  refreshment  of  the  body,  that  it 
may  become  Thy  holy  benediction,  to  everyone  who 
touches  this  ointment  a  means  of  protection  for  mind 
and  body."  Here  again  is  suggested  the  possible 
transmutation  of  matter  into  the  "  glorified  body,"  at 
the  bidding  of  a  will  which  is  in  harmony  with  the 
Supreme  Will  and  in  harmony  with  its  neighbours. 
For  health  is  harmony  within  the  body,  or  wholeness. 
May  not  this  lesser  harmony  be  in  the  same  way 
dependent  on  the  harmony  of  men  within  the  will  and 
Commonwealth  of  God  ? 

Marriage,  more  than  any  sacrament,  excepting  the 
two  great  sacraments  of  the  Gospel,  involves  our  two 
socialist  dogmas  concerning  the  body  and  the  fellow- 
ship, and  denies  that  any  of  the  primal  instincts  are 
"  common  or  unclean." 

There  have  been  Manichean  currents  of  tremendous 
force  that  have  swept  through  different  periods  of  the 
Church's  history,  all  but  drowning  the  sane  and 


THE   SACRAMENTS  157 

wholesome  wedding  of  the  material  and  spiritual. 
Her  foes  have  been  of  her  own  household,  but  her 
liturgies  and  official  teaching  have  been  marvellously 
preserved  from  the  prurient  divorce  of  what  God  has 
joined  together.  The  fact  that  so  often  in  practice 
domestic  union  becomes  vulgar  and  trivial,  the 
Church  attributes  to  man's  failure  to  regard  the  conse- 
crated union  of  lovers  as  "  Magnum  Sacramentum, "  l 
as  no  mere  gratification  of  the  senses,  no  mere 
artifice  of  society,  but  as  belonging,  like  every  other 
great  human  institution  "to  a  gracious  economy," 
for  "it  embodies  and  presents  a  Divine  mystery; 
beginning  from  Heaven,  it  can  speak  simply  and 
bravely  of  that  which  belongs  to  earth.  It  discards 
the  Manichean  dogma  once  and  altogether.  It  claims 
the  whole  region  of  human  feelings  and  sympathies 
as  a  sanctified  region."  2  One  of  the  grievances  of  the 
Puritan  enemies  of  the  Anglican  Church  was  the 
frankly  sensuous,  "  With  my  body  I  thee  worship," 
of  the  Liturgy.  The  bridal  psalm  tells  of  the  bride 
as  fruitful  vine  and  of  the  fructifying  earth.  The 
collect  illegally  omitted  by  drawing-room  decadents 
calls  upon  the  Father,  "by  whose  gracious  gift  mankind 
is  increased,  that  these  two  persons  may  be  fruitful 
in  procreation  of  children."  The  ministers  of  marriage 
are  not  the  official  priests,  but  the  lovers,  who,  how- 
ever, must  receive  the  recognition  of  society  (Church 
and  State),  and  who  come  into  the  body  of  the  Church 
to  signify  their  willingness  to  submit  their  private 
choice  to  public  sanction.  The  most  Catholic  of 
modern  novelists  has  attempted  to  restore  the 

1  St  Paul.  2  Maurice,  The  Church  a  Family. 


158      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

robust  purity  of  the  matrimonial  teaching  of  the 
Prayer  Book  and  early  liturgies : l  "  She  gave  him 
comprehension  of  the  meaning  of  love,  a  word  in 
many  mouths,  not  often  explained.  With  her, 
wound  in  his  idea  of  her,  he  perceived  it  to  signify 
a  new  start  in  existence,  a  finer  shoot  of  the  tree 
stoutly  planted  in  good  gross  earth ;  the  senses 
running  their  live  sap  and  the  mind  companioning, 
and  the  spirits  made  one  by  the  whole  natural  con- 
junction." "In  sooth  a  happy  prospect  for  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  earth,  divinely  indicating  more 
than  happiness,  the  speeding  of  us,  compact  of  what 
we  are,  between  the  ascetic  rocks  and  the  sensuous 
whirlpools  to  the  creation  of  certain  nobler  races, 
now  very  dimly  imagined."  The  fellowship  of 
marriage  is  emphasised  by  Chrysostom  where  he 
advises  marriage  with  a  poor  rather  than  with  a 
wealthy  wife,  for  "  private  property  divides  lovers  " ; 
and  continues,  "  not  even  the  bodies  of  married 
people  are  private ;  how  can  their  money  be  ?  One 
man,  one  living  creature,  is  what  you  both  are  now, 
and  do  you  still  say  mine?  That  word  is  accursed 
and  unholy  and  brought  in  by  the  devil.  Things 
far  more  needful  than  this  God  made  wholly  agree- 
able to  us.  ...  We  cannot  say  —  my  light,  my 
sun,  my  sea."2  The  true  marriage  is  not  only  an 
internal  community  but  broadens  out  into  social 
teaching  and  the  fulfilment  of  neighbourly  duties. 
It  is  valuable  as  training-ground  for  the  exer- 
cise of  virtues  which  expand  in  widening  circles 

1  Meredith,  Diana,  ch.  xxxvii. 

2  Chrysostom,  trans,  by  Charles  Marson  in  Optimist,  1906. 


THE   SACRAMENTS  159 

to  our  neighbours,  to  our  country,  and  to  other 
nations.1  For,  says  a  modern  socialist  leader,  "is 
there  any  community  as  united  and  effective  as  a 
family?  .  .  .  All  the  relations  of  family  life  are 
carried  on  in  direct  opposition  to  the  principles  of 
political  economy  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  A 
family  is  bound  by  ties  of  mutual  love  and  helpful- 
ness: the  weakly  child  is  not  destroyed ;  it  is  cherished 
with  extreme  tenderness  and  care.  The  rule  is  vested 
in  the  parents,  and  not  knocked  down  to  the  highest 
bidder.  The  brothers  do  not  undersell  each  other ; 
the  women  are  better  treated  than  the  men,  not  worse, 
as  in  the  factories,  and  each  member  receives  an  equal 
share  of  the  commonwealth."2 

It  has  been  well  said  that  the  roots  of  universal 
love  are  found  in  the  intimate  physical  union  of 
lovers,3  for  the  heart  of  the  lover  goes  out  to  every 
creature  that  shares  the  loved  one's  delicious  humanity. 
"  A  great  mystery "  truly,  by  which  St  Paul  meant 
not  a  silly  puzzle  into  which  we  must  not  inquire, 
but  something  so  vital,  primal,  and  inspiring  that  it 
transcends  logic  and  escapes  the  nets  of  definition. 
If  men  are  God's  family  they  must  model  their 
public  and  political  life  on  the  basis  of  holy  human 
families,  the  members  of  which  fulfil  not  each  one  his 
own  but  every  one  the  commonwealth.  Monopolist 
narrowness,  want  of  mutual  belief  and  liberty,  bully- 
ing, nagging,  jealousy,  the  modern  proprietary  rights 


1  Knox  Little,  Marriage,  p.  243. 
3  Blatchford,  Merrie  England^  id.  edition,  p.  118. 
3  Ellis,  New  Spirit,  p.   121  ;  cf.  several  passages  in  the  writings  of 
Balzac. 


160      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

of  the   male1— all  these  too  often  destroy  the  holy 
sacrament  of  marriage. 

Finally,  every  sacrament  bears  witness  that  "  there 
is  really  a  free  society  ...  to  which  we  all  in  our 
inmost  selves  .  .  .  belong — the  Rose  of  Souls  that 
Dante  beheld  in  Paradise,  whose  every  petal  is  an 
individual  only  through  its  union  with  all  the  rest — 
the  early  Church's  dream  of  an  eternal  fellowship 
in  Heaven  and  on  earth,  prototype  of  all  the  brother- 
hoods and  fellowships  that  exist  on  this  or  any  other 
planet."2 

1  Cf.  Chapter  VII.,  pp.  173,  174- 

2  Quoted  in  Edward  Carpenter's  Love's  Coming  of  Age. 


VII 
THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE 

Poverty  preventible — Material  readjustments— Anti-socialist  arguments 
met  by  the  fact  of  the  Middle  Ages — Prosperity  of  the  people  from 
1450 — By  their  architecture  ye  shall  know  them — The  meaning  of 
hospitals — The  property  of  the  Church — A  defence  of  the  monas- 
teries— Various  monastic  ideals — The  life  and  power  of  the  demo- 
cratic parish — The  anti-feudalism  of  the  Church's  parochial  system 
— How  far  it  was  "  the  Golden  Age  "  of  the  labourer— The  Church 
as  mediator  between  barbarians  and  Romans — The  Aristotelian 
influence — Becket  and  Langton — For  what  did  they  fight — The 
materialist  conception  of  history  challenged — The  Crown  and 
the  people — St  Thomas  Aquinas  on  property — The  deadly  sin 
of  avarice  :  instances — Interest- taking  and  buying  in  the  cheapest 
market  —  The  socialistic  influence  of  the  confessional  —  Canon 
law  on  common  property  —  On  usury  —  Papal  bull,  1176,  on 
credit  operations — The  Church  and  mortgages — Innocent  III.  on 
lawfulness  of  moderate  interest  for  invalids — Church  law  clashes 
with  Roman  law — Land  and  labour  as  sole  sources  of  wealth — Mr 
Ashley's  misunderstanding  of  socialism — The  Church  and  compul- 
sion— Newman  quoted  on  compulsion — Anarchist  archdeacons  and 
bishops — The  peasant  revolt — Summary  of  the  social  aims  of  the 
Church — The  old  order  changeth,  giving  place  to  new. 


II 


VII 
THE    HOLY    ROMAN    EMPIRE 

"  It  is  not  true  that  the  Church  of  our  ancestors  was  the  organised 
fraud  which  it  suits  fanatics  to  represent  it  ;  it  is  not  true  that  the 
monasteries,  priories,  and  nunneries  were  mere  receptacles  for  all 
uncleanness  and  lewdness  ;  it  is  not  true  that  the  great  revenues  of  the 
celibate  clergy  and  of  celibate  recluses  were  squandered  as  a  rule  in 
riotous  living.  As  a  mere  question  of  religion,  Catholicism  was  as 
good  as  any  creed  which  has  ever  found  acceptance  among  men. 
Abuses  doubtless  there  were,  and  most  of  them  were  bitterly  attacked 
by  members  of  the  Church  themselves  ;  tyranny  and  persecution  there 
were  too,  in  many  forms  ;  but  the  Church,  as  all  know,  was  the  one 
body  in  which  equality  of  conditions  was  the  rule  from  the  start. 
There,  at  least,  the  man  of  ability,  who  outside  her  pale  was  forced  to 
bow  down  before  some  Norman  baron  whose  ruffianly  ancestor  had 
formed  part  of  William's  gang  of  marauders,  could  rise  to  a  position  in 
which  this  rough,  unlettered  swashbuckler  grovelled  before  him. 
Sixtus  V.  was  picked  up  out  of  the  gutter  ;  our  Englishman,  Nicholas 
Breakspear,  Adrian  IV.,  was  a  poor  labourer's  son  ;  and  these  are  but 
two  instances  out  of  thousands  of  distinguished  ecclesiastics  of  humble 
birth.  However  dangerous  also  the  spiritual  authority  of  the  Church 
may  appear  to  us,  it  was  used,  for  the  most  part,  notwithstanding  all 
the  hideous  corruptions  of  the  papal  court  in  the  days  of  the  Borgias 
and  others,  for  the  people  and  against  the  dominant  class  ;  and  its 
influence,  as  history  shows,  was  almost  unbounded.  Kings  and  barons 
alike  trembled  before  it.  ...  So  I  might  go  on  in  refutation  of  the 
foolish  idea  that  the  greatest  institution  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  most 
complete  and  widespread  organisation  ever  known  on  this  planet, 
was  a  mere  collection  of  idol-worshippers  and  incense- burners,  and 
its  ecclesiastical  establishments  nothing  but  dens  of  iniquity.  My 
purpose,  however,  is  not  to  champion  the  Catholic  Church  against  the 
attacks  of  ignorant  historians,  but  to  show  briefly  the  useful  functions 
it  fulfilled  in  the  social  economy  of  the  time." — HYNDMAN,  Historical 
Basis  of  Socialism  in  England. 

163 


1 64      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

WHEN  we  are  facing  the  fact  of  our  twelve  million 
people  on  or  below  the  hunger-line,  of  our  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  semi-starved  school-children,  of  our 
three-farthings  an  hour  rate  for  women  and  children, 
working  often  over  sixteen  hours  a  day  in  the  sweated 
industries,  of  our  large  areas  of  unemployed  and 
underfed,  and  of  our  thousands  of  homeless,  one 
often  hears  it  said  that  we  are  wrong  in  considering 
these  things  preventible.  Poverty  will  always  be 
with  us.  These  conditions  more  or  less  exist  in  all 
times.  Mere  legislation  or  reconstruction  of  in- 
dustries, or  economic  readjustments,  have  over  and 
over  again  been  proved  entirely  futile  ;  you  cannot 
help  people  by  Act  of  Parliament ;  it  is  ridiculous  to 
suppose  that  Lord  Shaftesbury's  Acts  preventing  the 
employment  of  five-year-old  children  in  factories 
could  have  altered  the  condition  of  children  in 
factories ;  children  of  five  years  are  therefore  still 
employed  in  factories,  because  our  friends  say  you 
cannot  alter  evils  by  Act  of  Parliament.  The  fact 
that  they  are  not  so  employed  any  longer  does  not,  of 
course,  trouble  the  anti-socialist  Christian  who  argues 
in  this  way. 

Now,  the  argument  that  poverty  is  not  preventible, 
that  no  change  in  economic  conditions  could  reduce 
it,  that  there  has  always  been  more  or  less  this  huge 
margin  of  unemployment,  that  there  have  always 
been  more  or  less  large  classes  working  sixteen  hours 
a  day,  that  other  large  classes  have  always  been 
without  a  roof  to  their  heads,  must  be  met  with  a 
direct  denial.  The  appeal  to  history  on  this  point  is 
conclusive. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  165 

Let  us  consider  the  lives  of  the  English  people 
during  a  hundred  years  of  what  is  generally  known  as 
the  mediaeval  period,  from  early  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
There  were,  it  must  be  admitted,  two  or  three  brief 
periods,  covering  from  two  to  three  years  each,  of 
extreme  misery  caused  by  plague  and  famine,  but  it 
is  remarkable  how  swiftly  and  completely  the  people 
recovered  from  these  periods.  Moreover,  the  plagues 
were  admittedly  accidental.  There  is  no  controversy 
between  the  opponents  of  socialism  and  its  adherents 
on  this  point.  With  their  usual  want  of  logic,  people 
who  assert  that  no  mere  outward  changes  can  really 
better  a  nation,  assert  with  equal  cheerfulness  that 
plagues  are  now  stamped  out  wherever  the  mere 
outward  change  of  proper  sanitation,  more  sunshine, 
less  crowding,  greater  cleanliness  prevails.  That 
particular  form  of  mediaeval  misery,  therefore,  they 
admit  need  hardly  recur  ;  but  for  that  particular  form 
the  hundred  years  I  have  chosen  presents  a  startling 
contrast  to  the  last  hundred  years  in  our  history. 
The  critics  of  socialism  assert  that  unemployment 
is  more  or  less  inevitable :  during  that  hundred  years 
there  was  no  unemployment.  The  critics  of  socialism 
assert  that  there  will  always  be,  and  that  there  always 
have  been,  large  numbers  of  people  working  fourteen, 
sixteen,  and  sometimes  eighteen  hours  a  day :  during 
that  hundred  years  hardly  anyone  worked  above  eight 
hours  a  day.  The  critics  of  socialism  assert  that  a 
minimum  wage  is  an  impossibility :  during  that 
hundred  years  the  minimum  wage  was  in  full 
operation.  The  critics  of  socialism  assert  that 
there  have  always  been  large  numbers  of  home- 


1 66      SOCIALISM  IN   CHURCH  HISTORY 

less  people:  during  that  hundred  years  no  man 
or  woman  was  homeless.  The  critics  of  socialism 
assert  that  women  in  industry  must  naturally  work 
longer  hours  than  men  and  be  paid  less :  during 
that  hundred  years  women  worked  the  same  number 
of  hours  as  men,  and  were  often  paid  as  much.1 
We  are  told  that  a  permanent  class  of  wage- 
earners,  at  the  beck  and  call  of  capital,  is  a  neces- 
sary condition  for  the  prosperity  of  a  country : 
the  England  of  that  hundred  years  had  no  such 
permanent  class. 

Let  us  look  more  closely  into  the  life  of  the  period. 
There  did  not  exist  the  great  gulf  between  rich  and 
poor  which  so  many  now  regard  as  inevitable.  Con- 
ditions were  rougher  for  all ;  but  a  rough  life  is  not 
altogether  to  the  bad  if  one  is  secure  in  food,  clothing, 
and  shelter ;  the  great  majority  of  the  people  lived 
upon  the  land,  and  the  artisan  minority  were  particu- 
larly prosperous.  Their  unions  were  strong;  black- 
legging  was  forbidden,  holidays  were  frequent,  and 
almost  every  artisan  became  an  independent  master 
worker,  having  passed  through  a  few  years  of  appren- 
ticeship. He  owned  his  own  tools  and  was  not  at 
the  mercy  of  an  employer.  He  was  free  in  everything 
excepting  the  chance  of  becoming  a  capitalist  in  the 
modern  sense,  that  is,  of  cornering  essentials  and 
thereby  enslaving  other  men.  The  type  of  man 
whom  we  now  delight  to  honour,  the  successful 
plutocrat,  no  doubt  existed,  but  he  was  rigidly  kept 

1  Mr  Abram,  Social  England  in  the  Fifteenth  Cent^^ry  (1909),  cites 
instances  to  the  contrary,  but  in  the  worst  cases  wages  of  women  never 
fell  to  anything  approaching  the  starvation  rates  of  pay  for  women  in 
our  own  day. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  167 

under  and   regarded   as   a   scoundrel   by  the  whole 
community. 

But  only  one-tenth  of  the  population  lived  in  the 
towns.  Agriculture  was  carried  on  by  tenants  of  the 
manor,  who  themselves  often  owned  a  small  piece  of 
land  and  were  part-owners  of  the  common  land  of  the 
neighbourhood  ;  their  fuel  cost  them  little  or  nothing, 
as  they  had  the  right  of  free  fuel  from  the  forests  ; 
they  had  also  the  right  of  snaring  wild  animals,  which 
were  very  numerous.  The  poacher  of  to-day  is  but 
instinctively  claiming  an  ancient  privilege  of  the 
people.  Serfdom  had  almost  died  out.  The  tenant 
had  formerly  been  obliged  to  cultivate  his  lord's  land 
on  certain  days  of  the  week,  in  return  for  his  lord's 
protection  ;  this  labour  service  had  by  now  been  to 
a  great  extent  commuted  into  a  small  rent  to  the 
manor.  It  has  been  estimated  that  the  peasant  of 
that  day  would  be  able  to  earn  his  rent  for  the 
year  by  a  few  days'  work.  A  day's  earnings  would 
keep  a  labourer  for  a  whole  week.  Bread  and  ale, 
the  staple  food  of  the  people,  were  under  close  muni- 
cipal inspection,  and  there  are  several  cases  of  towns 
owning  their  own  bakery.  The  artisan  as  well  as 
the  peasant  often  owned  a  small  piece  of  land. 
Towns  and  villages  were  solidly  and  beautifully 
built.  The  architecture  of  the  day  expresses  the 
life  of  a  joyous  people.  Ruskin  and  William  Morris 
have  pointed  out  how  one  may  read  the  life  and 
fortunes  of  a  people  in  their  art;  and  if  art  be 
the  language  of  a  nation,  the  language  England 
spoke  in  those  days  reveals  a  merry  England  in 
fact  and  in  deed. 


1 68      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

The  cathedrals  and  parish  churches  were  built 
and  adorned  for  the  most  part  by  local  craftsmen. 
"  We  get  fairly  bewildered  by  the  astonishing  wealth 
of  skill  and  artistic  taste  and  aesthetic  feeling  which 
there  must  have  been  in  this  England  of  ours  in 
times  which,  till  lately,  we  have  assumed  to  be 
barbaric." l 

We  often  read  of  hospitals  in  the  literature  of  the 
day ;  these  institutions,  kept  up  from  revenues  from 
land  or  other  sources  bequeathed  by  will,  were  not 
always,  nor  indeed  chiefly,  hospitals  for  the  sick,  but 
were  houses  for  the  old  and  disabled ;  they  were  in 
a  real  sense  substitutes  for  old-age  pensions.  The 
Church  held  about  a  third  of  the  total  wealth  of 
the  country  ;  most  of  this  was  in  landed  property. 
The  monasteries  were  large  landed  proprietors;  the 
monks  were  often  themselves  peasants  who  had 
escaped  from  the  risks  and  hardship  of  secular  life 
into  the  security  of  the  monastery.  They  were  fellow- 
workers  alongside  of  their  tenants,  and  "  abbots  and 
priors  were  the  best  landlords  in  England."  Theearliest 
improvements  in  agriculture  were  due  to  the  clergy. 
The  Church's  internationalism  led  to  the  introduction 
of  new  articles  of  cultivation.  Immense  monastic 
revenues  led  to  improved  husbandry  on  a  lavish 
scale.  "This  general  employment  which  as  land- 
lords resident  among  the  people  they  afforded,  the 
improvements  of  the  farms  and  of  their  own  buildings 
which  they  carried  out,  the  excellent  work  in  road- 
making  which  they  did  (a  task  specially  necessary 
in  those  times),  in  addition  to  their  action  as  public 

1  Jessop,  Before  the  Great  Pillage,  p.  25. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  169 

alms-givers,  teachers,  doctors,  and  nurses,  shows  what 
useful  people  many  of  these  much-abused  monks  and 
nuns  really  were.  .  .  .  That  the  Church  as  a  whole  held 
its  lands  in  great  part  as  a  trust  for  the  people  cannot 
be  disputed,  and  as  the  children  of  the  people  in  great 
part  formed  the  hierarchy  of  the  Church,  Church 
property  in  land  then  meant  something  very  different 
from  Church  property  in  land  now."  l 

The  monastic  system  is  a  curious  instance  of  the 
associative,  one  might  almost  say  communistic, 
tendency  of  the  Christian  religion.  For  the  monk,  in 
the  first  instance,  was  he  who  dwelt  alone,  a  hermit, 
who  had  escaped  from  the  dangers  of  a  turbulent 
pagan  society.  In  some  senses  the  monk  might 
almost  be  considered  Protestant,  individualist,  im- 
patient of  the  collective  discipline  of  the  Church 
and  its  democratically  elected  bishops.  There  is  in 
St  Jerome,  the  monk  par  excellence,  a  passage  which 
contrasts  strangely  with  the  main  stream  of  collective 
Church  thought.  Churchmen  generally  had  held  with 
Clement  of  Alexandria  that  God  would  be  found 
among  men  dwelling  together,  and  that  terms  of 
citizenship  were  most  descriptive  of  the  Christian 
life.  But  St  Jerome  speaks  as  a  precursor  almost  of 
John  Bunyan  the  individualist,  who  finds  salvation  in 
escape  from  the  city.  The  founder  of  Christian 
monasticism  counsels  us  to  escape  from  towns  and 
the  haunts  of  men,  that  we  may  find  God  in  the 
desert.  But  so  strong  is  the  socialist  principle  in  the 
Church  that  these  solitaries  inevitably  come  together, 
and  are  soon  discovered  to  have  formed  themselves 

1  Hyndman,  Historic  Basis  of  Socialism  in  England. 


i7o      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

into  bodies  wherein  fellowship  is  the  rule  and  com- 
munism the  practice.  In  the  case  of  most  of  the  later 
monastic  leaders,  it  is  because  the  world  of  their  day 
is  so  anarchic  and  disunited,  and  because  in  fellowship 
alone  they  can  discover  God,  that  they  found  their 
communities.  The  Venerable  Bede,  for  instance, 
turning  away  from  the  rudeness  of  Saxon  England 
to  the  fellowship  of  the  monastery,  finds  in  that 
fellowship  a  heavenly  citizenship.  Heaven  was  to 
him  the  city,  his  monastery  a  room  in  the  "urbs 
ccelestis." 

The  ideals  of  the  religious  orders  were  not  always 
the  same.  The  strictly  monastic  aim  was  the 
perfecting  of  the  individual  in  withdrawal  from  the 
world,  and  the  helping  forward  of  the  salvation  of  the 
world  by  the  prayers  of  persons  on  the  vantage-ground 
of  seclusion.  But  the  missionary  orders — as,  for 
instance,  the  Franciscans  and  the  Cistercians — flung 
themselves  out  upon  the  world  with  all  the  force  of 
a  collective  enthusiasm. 

But  it  is  not  to  the  monastery  alone  or  chiefly  that 
we  must  look,  if  we  would  appreciate  the  value  of  the 
Church's  contribution  to  mediaeval  life.  Nor  must  we 
overestimate  the  influence  of  the  central  government. 
Municipal  administration  wasof  much moreimportance, 
and  was  very  largely  democratic.  The  ecclesiastical 
parish  was  completely  interwoven  with  the  life  of  the 
people.  "  Now  the  parish  was  the  community  of  the 
township  organised  for  Church  purposes,  and  subject 
to  Church  discipline,  with  a  constitution  which  recog- 
nised the  rights  of  the  whole  body  as  an  aggregate 
and  the  right  of  every  adult  member,  whether  man  or 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  171 

woman,  to  a  voice  in  self-government,  but  at  the  same 
time  kept  the  self-governing  community  under  a 
system  of  inspection  and  restraint,  by  a  central 
authority  outside  the  parish  boundaries."1 

The  rector  of  the  parish  was  its  chairman,  but  not 
its  ruler.  Finance  was  not  under  his  control.  The 
parish  clerk,  gravediggers,  and  others  were  paid 
servants,  not 'of  the  rector,  but  of  the  parish.  The 
parish  owned  considerable  properties — houses,  lands, 
flocks,  herds,  jewels,  silver,  gold,  furniture,  bells, 
tapestry,  crosses,  candlesticks,  vestments,  carpets, 
pictures,  service-books,  and  a  host  of  other  things. 

"All  the  tendency  of  the  feudal  system,  working 
through  the  manorial  courts,  was  to  keep  the  people 
down.  All  the  tendency  of  the  parochial  system, 
working  through  the  parish  council,  holding  its 
assemblies  in  the  churches  where  the  people  met  on 
equal  terms  as  children  and  servants  of  the  living 
God  and  members  of  one  body  in  Christ  Jesus,  was 
to  lift  the  people  up." 2 

It  must  not  be  thought  that  this  period  was  without 
its  economic  miseries ;  it  is  only  in  comparison  with 
the  dark  ages,  with  the  individualism  of  the  eighteenth 
and  nineteenth  centuries,  that  it  can  be  called  "the 
Golden  Age  of  the  British  labourer."  It  was  a 
comparatively  Golden  Age,  because  the  bulk  of  the 
working  nation  had  some  access  to  land  and  such 
embryo  forms  of  capital  as  existed,  because  plutocracy 
was  ruthlessly  kept  down,  and  restrictions  of  every 
sort  were  placed  upon  the  owners  of  private  property. 

1  Bishop  Hobhouse,  Somerset  Record  Society,  vol.  iv.  p.  ix. 

2  Jessopp,  Before  the  Great  Pillage,  p.  22. 


172      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

If  it  be  asked  how  this  result  had  been  obtained,  the 
causes  of  it  will  be  found  to  be  complex.  The  Gothic 
invasion  had  introduced  democratic  elements  into  a 
dying  civilisation.  Uprooted  from  their  own  soil  and 
in  the  first  flush  of  conquest,  the  conquerors  may  well 
have  seemed  passionate  and  brutal,  fully  deserving  of 
the  contemptuous  nickname  "  barbarian  "  which  the 
Romans  had  given  them.  The  immediate  result  of 
this  inpouring  of  new  human  forces  seemed  to  be 
anarchy  and  confusion  ;  the  only  element  in  the  dying 
Empire  which  was  able  to  withstand  the  shock  of  this 
disintegration  was  the  Catholic  philosophy  and 
system.  The  democratically  chosen  bishops  were 
really  leaders  of  the  people,  and  stood  for  order  and 
fellowship  in  the  midst  of  the  prevailing  chaos.  They 
were  friends  of  the  barbarians,  as  well  as  of  the 
Romans  :  the  Church  stood  on  no  distinction  ;  for  her 
there  was  neither  barbarian  nor  Scythian,  Greek  nor 
Roman,  bond  nor  free,  and  just  as  Church  philosophy 
had  in  earlier  times  been  developed  by  fusion  with 
certain  living  Graeco-Roman  ideas,  so  now  it  was 
developed  by  its  incorporation  of  the  most  living 
tradition  of  the  invaders.  The  conquerors  found  in 
the  Christian  bishops  men  who  withstood  them  to 
the  face  in  the  matter  of  their  passions  and  extrava- 
gances, but  they  also  found  in  them  men  who  could 
interpret  what  was  finest  in  their  own  thought  and 
customs,  and  the  new  Europe  believed  and  was 
baptized.  One  sees  in  English  life  of  the  thirteenth 
and  fourteenth  centuries  a  Christian  philosophy  and 
economic  system,  strengthened  by  Teutonic  thought 
and  custom,  warring  against  the  more  individualistic 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  173 

elements  of  feudalism  which  had  their  origin  in  the 
individual  private  property  theories  of  the  earlier 
Roman  lawyers.  To  some  extent  the  popularity  of 
Aristotle  among  the  dominant  Catholic  philosophers 
of  this  period  may  have  inclined  them  to  a  less 
communistic  view  of  property  than  had  obtained 
among  the  earlier  Fathers  of  the  Church ;  but  this 
view  was  in  some  part  counteracted  by  the  ideals  of  a 
rival  school  of  Catholic  thought,  a  school  well  repre- 
sented in  the  philosophy  of  Duns  Scotus.  But  the 
Christian  Aristotelians  must  be  considered  to  have 
made  their  intellectual  contribution  to  a  Catholic 
philosophy  by  their  appeal  to  Aristotle,  for  the 
Aristotelian  note  is  no  less  necessary  than  the 
Platonic  to  the  building  of  a  Christian  ethic. 
Socialists  are  not  communists,  and  need  have  no 
quarrel  with  the  catholicised  Aristotle  of  Aquinas. 
We  find  Church  law  everywhere  modifying  the 
secular  laws  of  nations  which  had  come  under  the 
dominion  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

But  during  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  in 
England  the  codified  law  of  the  Church  and  the 
uncodified  laws  of  feudalism  were  in  opposition. 
The  English  people  felt  dimly  that  Anselm  was 
fighting  for  their  liberties  against  despotism.  For 
fifty  years  after  his  death  the  influence  of  feudalism 
increased,  and  the  Crown  tightened  its  hold  upon 
the  Church.  The  bishops  tended  to  become  mere 
officers  of  the  Crown.  Feudalism  made  much  of 
offences  against  property,  little  of  offences  against 
persons.  In  the  patriarchal  or  feudal  idea  of  the 
family,  the  husband  has  absolute  right  over  the  wife, 


174     SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  father  over  sons  and  daughters.  Parents  might 
give  their  children  in  marriage  without  their  consent. 
Neither  Scripture  nor  Church  law  gives  support  to 
this  monogamic  despotism.  Church  law  again  put 
strict  limits  to  the  feudal  theory  of  obedience  of 
slaves  and  servants.  As  the  reader  realises  the 
singular  justice,  leniency,  and  humanity  of  the 
Church's  law,  and  the  brutality  of  the  customs  of 
the  realm,  death  being  the  punishment  for  offences 
against  property,  he  will  begin  to  understand  the 
tremendous  issues  involved  in  the  struggle  between 
Church  and  State.  In  order  to  escape  the  secular 
law,  thousands  of  folk  were  taking  Orders  in  the 
Church ;  gravediggers,  bell  -  ringers,  secretaries, 
lawyers,  lawyers'  clerks,  sextons,  scholars,  and  many 
others  were  in  one  or  other  of  its  seven  Orders. 
Tyndale,  true  precursor  of  Christo-capitalism,  voiced 
the  ancient  feudalism  and  the  coming  commercialism 
when  he  fastened  the  charge  of  bearing  u  the  mark  of 
the  Beast"  upon  all  who  rebelled  against  the  king, 
or  against  their  overlords,  or  against  the  nigger- 
driving  of  the  feudal  family  by  taking  Orders  and  so 
escaping  into  comparative  freedom.  According  to 
him,  the  king  could  do  no  wrong,  a  parent  was 
absolute  master  of  his  family,  a  lord  absolute  over 
his  servants. 

St  Thomas  of  Canterbury  (1117-1 170),  in  his  resist- 
ance to  King  Henry  II.,  was  therefore  championing 
the  liberties  of  the  people.  He  was  driven  by  the 
necessities  of  the  situation  to  appeal  to  Rome,  and 
so  to  strengthen  a  power,  beneficent  in  chaotic  days, 
but  malevolent  at  a  later  period.  He  was  claiming 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  175 

for  as  large  a  portion  of  the  English  nation  as  possible 
exemption  from  the  uncertainties  of  the  "  customs  of 
the  realm,"  and  the  more  lenient  and  even  treatment 
of  international  Christian  law,  a  law  which  we  shall 
recognise  as  embodying  the  underlying  assump- 
tions of  socialism,  and  as  not  unlike  it  in  some  of 
its  actual  and  practical  judgments.  St  Thomas 
the  martyr  was  canonised  in  the  hearts  of  the 
English  people.  From  that  date  onwards  through- 
out Stephen's  reign  religion  was  a  living  reality, 
and  the  Cistercian  revival  became  strong  enough  to 
wrest  England  from  the  confusion  of  feudalism  and 
prepared  the  way  for  the  Great  Charter.  The  quarrel 
between  John  and  the  Pope  (1207-1213)  ended  in  the 
victory  of  Rome  and  the  realisation  of  Hildebrand's 
dream.  England  had  become  a  fief  of  the  Papacy. 
Stephen  Langton,  at  first  the  servant  and  ultimately 
the  opponent  of  Rome,  formulated  a  democratic 
policy  for  the  people.  "  Rights  and  liberties  were  no 
longer  to  be  vague  and  shadowy  things  half-veiled 
in  sentiment,  they  were  to  be  written  down  fair  in 
black  and  white  and  embodied  in  a  charter."1 

On  1 5th  June  1215,  the  signature  of  the  Great 
Charter  by  John  at  Runnymede  confirmed  Langton's 
policy.  But  the  Pope  betrayed  the  archbishop,  and 
supported  the  king  against  the  people,  annulled  the 
Charter,  excommunicated  the  barons  who  had  signed 
it,  and  suspended  Langton  for  refusing  to  publish  the 
excommunication.  The  Charter  was  subsequently 
confirmed  by  Honorius  III.,  and  the  Church  of 
England  was  at  peace. 

1  Wakeman's  Church  History ',  p.  130. 


1 76      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

By  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  the 
religious  revival  had  spent  its  force.  The  monas- 
teries had  become  large  landholders.  The  clergy 
were  often  non-resident  and  illiterate.  The  Black 
Friars  and  the  Grey  Friars  restored  the  faith  of  the 
democracy.  The  monk  had  sought  the  salvation  of 
his  own  soul.  The  friars  saved  the  soul  of  the  nation, 
and  "  Fellowship  is  heaven,  and  the  lack  of  fellow- 
ship is  hell,"  became  a  common  motto.  Their  warm 
hearts  and  coarse  wit  won  the  masses.  They  invaded 
sleepy  parishes,  were  offered  on  occasion  the  hospi- 
tality of  the  church,  but  more  often  preached  without 
the  parson's  leave  on  the  village  green,  and  stirred  up 
strife  and  life  wherever  they  went.  Their  mission 
throughout  England  led  to  the  recognition  of  repre- 
sentative government  and  the  summoning  of  the  first 
parliament. 

The  idea  of  representation  was  borrowed  from  the 
Church,  who  took  her  full  share  in  the  upbuilding  of 
democratic  England.  But  from  the  time  of  John's 
submission  Pope  and  king  are  united  in  unholy 
alliance  against  the  democracy,  and  the  official 
clergy  and  courtiers  are  not  often  found  on  the 
popular  side. 

Critics  who  adopt  what  is  called  the  materialist 
interpretation  of  history,  an  interpretation  based 
on  the  assumption  that  ideas  do  not  create  con- 
ditions, but  that  those  conditions  create  the  idea, 
would,  we  suppose,  ignore  the  part  played  by  the 
Church  in  constructing  a  prosperous  England.  They 
would  say  that  the  people  of  that  epoch  were 
comparatively  prosperous  because  they  happened  to 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  177 

have  some  access  to  land  and  capital :  that  they  had 
such  access  is  undeniable,  but  that  they  happened 
to  have  it  must  be  emphatically  denied.  Their 
prosperity  was  not  due  to  chance  happenings,  but  to 
deliberate  beliefs  and  a  deliberate  exercise  of  the 
collective  will,  which  embodied  itself  in  this  material 
access  and  socialistic  legislation  of  various  kinds. 
Individualist  Protestantism,  as  we  shall  see  in  a  later 
section,  revives  the  old  Roman  theory  of  absolute 
ownership.  Collective  Catholicism  denies  that  concep- 
tion, and,  in  denying  it,  is  able  to  apply  a  theory  of 
land  and  of  other  forms  of  property  which  succeeded 
to  a  large  extent  in  drawing  the  sting  of  feudalism. 
In  this  country,  for  instance,  before  the  Reformation, 
land  was  considered  not  to  belong  absolutely  but 
relatively  to  the  lords  of  manors.  In  reality  it 
belonged  to  the  king,  and  was  given  to  the  baron  or 
the  Church  community  in  return  for  certain  services 
to  be  rendered  annually  to  the  nation.  But  the  king 
himself  was,  at  least  in  theory,  and  to  a  great  extent 
in  practice,  no  Oriental  despot,  but  representative  of 
the  whole  people.  All  land  was  ultimately  Crown 
land,  and  the  Crown  meant  ultimately  the  people. 
This  interpretation  of  the  land  laws  tallies  with  the 
law  of  the  Church. 

Every  age  has  its  popular  encyclopaedia.  Harms- 
worth  is  the  popular  encyclopaedist  of  the  twentieth 
century.  St  Thomas  Aquinas  was  the  popular 
encyclopaedist  of  the  thirteenth.  St  Thomas  does  not 
hold  the  extremer  communistic  theories  of  some  of 
the  early  Fathers.  He  would  allow  some  kinds  of 
private  property.  He  holds  that  such  property  is  not 

12 


178      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

indeed  found  in  natural  law,  but  that  both  property 
and  government  are  legitimate  within  certain  bounds, 
and  are  not  the  result  of  sin,  nor  in  contradiction  to 
that  earlier  law,  but  are  super-added  to  it  by  the  good 
human  reason.  While  men  may  therefore  hold  certain 
forms  of  private  property,  they  must  administer  it,  after 
the  necessities  of  their  own  position  have  been  guaran- 
teed, as  being  common  to  all.  Their  superfluity  is  com- 
mon, is  the  right  and  property  of  the  poor.  In  certain 
cases  of  necessity  "  all  things  become  common." 

"  Where  there  is  such  evident  and  urgent  necessity 
that  it  is  manifest  that  help  must  be  given  from 
whatever  is  at  hand,  as,  for  instance,  if  a  person  is  in 
danger  and  cannot  otherwise  be  helped,  then  we  may 
lawfully  give  assistance  from  the  property  of  others, 
whether  it  be  taken  openly  or  by  stealth."1 

He  devotes  considerable  space  to  questions  of 
buying  and  selling.  Advantage  must  not  be  taken 
of  the  necessity  of  the  buyer,  nor  may  the  buyer 
take  advantage  of  the  ignorance  of  the  seller.  He 
decides,  in  spite  of  some  of  the  earlier  Fathers,  that 
certain  forms  of  trading  are  lawful ;  but  it  is  dishonest 
to  engage  in  the  exchange  of  commodities  if  one's 
motive  be  gain,  and  not  a  modest  livelihood.  A 
moderate  income  derived  from  trading,  if  you  are 
yourself  actively  engaged  in  the  business, — such  an 
income  as  shall  be  adequate  to  the  support  of  your 
family  and  household,  or  that  you  may  have  to  give 
to  the  poor  or  to  the  public  service, — is  legitimate. 
Such  an  income  is  to  be  considered  as  salary  taken 
for  work  rendered.  He  would  seem  to  admit  the 

1  Quoted  by  R.  W.  Carlyle  in  the  Economic  Review,  Jan.  1894. . 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  179 

morality  of  moderate  rent  from  houses,1  but  interest 
from  anything  else,  whether  in  money  or  in  kind,  he 
considers  unlawful.  Even  if  you  forego  the  use  of 
money  by  which  a  profit  might  be  made  by  yourself, 
you  have  no  right  to  claim  interest  on  that  account, 
or  for  the  risk  you  run  as  lender.  The  only  form  of 
interest  that  Aquinas  would  allow  is  a  small  sum  to 
secure  the  lender  against  the  possibility  of  the  non- 
return of  the  capital.  He  absolutely  condemns  specu- 
lative trading,  or  gain  resulting  from  a  skilful  use  of 
the  markets.  The  adequate  reward  of  labour,  a 
proper  living  wage,  must  be  considered  in  determining 
the  price  of  commodities.  He  lays  down  the  absolute 
law  that  all  commerce  must  base  itself  upon  the 
Gospel  precept,  "  Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men 
should  do  unto  you,  do  ye  also  unto  them."  "  He 
clearly  considers  that  in  any  particular  country  or 
district  there  is  for  every  article,  at  any  particular 
time,  some  one  just  price :  that  prices,  accordingly, 
should  not  vary  with  momentary  supply  and  demand, 
with  individual  caprice,  or  skill  in  the  chaffering  of 
the  market."2  The  significance  of  St  Thomas  is 
that  he  was  not  only  an  original  thinker,  but  the 
representative  of  the  more  moderate  traditions  of  the 
Church  on  these  subjects. 

It  is  valuable  to  notice  that  when  the  economic 
revolution  of  the  eleventh  century,  involving  the 
growth  of  towns,  the  formation  of  merchant  bodies, 
the  establishment  of  markets,  sought  to  justify  a 

1  Rent  on  land  itself  was  but  grudgingly  permitted  by  the  Church. 
God's  ultimate  intention  was  common  ownership.  Rent,  therefore, 
could  only  be  taken  as  payment  for  services  annually  rendered. 

'2  Ashley,  Economic  History  and  Theory,  vol.  i.  p.  146. 


i8o      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

theory  of  absolute  individual  property  and  unlimited 
freedom  of  contract,  it  was  met  by  organised  resistance 
on  the  part  of  the  Church,  with  its  two  doctrines  of 
the  just  price  and  the  sinfulness  of  interest.  These 
doctrines  were  enforced  from  the  pulpit,  in  the  confes- 
sional, in  the  ecclesiastical  courts  ;  "  and  we  shall  find 
that,  by  the  time  that  the  period  begins  of  legislative 
activity  on  the  part  of  the  secular  power,  these  two 
rules  have  been  so  impressed  on  the  consciences  of  men 
that  parliament,  municipality,  and  gild  endeavoured  of 
their  own  motion  to  secure  obedience  to  them."1 

It  has  been  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter  that 
the  original  of  the  confessional  was  essentially  social 
and  democratic,  and  now  that  the  Church  had  begun 
to  come  into  its  kingdom,  it  exercised  an  enormous 
influence  in  the  affairs  of  men.  It  required  above  all 
that  penitents  should  examine  themselves  as  to  their 
guilt  in  the  matter  of  the  seven  deadly  sins.  One  of 
these  sins  was  avarice ;  covetousness  or  avarice  was 
defined  as  eagerness  for  gain,  or  the  desire  of  what 
is  now  called  getting  on,  the  desire  to  be  rich.  The 
theologians,  following  St  Paul  and  St  Augustine, 
and  indeed  the  law  of  the  Church,  stigmatised  this 
desire  to  get  on  as  idolatry.  In  Chaucer's  Canterbury 
Tales,  the  Good  Parson  gives  as  example  of  the  deadly 
sin  that  extreme  enforcement  of  the  legal  rights  of 
the  lords  of  land  which  prepared  the  way  for  the 
modern  system  of  competitive  rents.  St  Chrysostom 
had  led  the  way  centuries  before  in  his  definition  of 
covetousness  as  the  desire  for  more  things  than  those 
to  which  our  faculties  can  correspond — over-endow- 

1  Ashley,  Economic  History  and  Theory,  vol.  i.  p.  132. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  181 

ment,  we  might  call  it.  Virtue  is  the  mean  between 
two  vices :  over-endowment  or  avarice  is  the  one  vice, 
the  opposite  of  which  is  under-endowment,  or  thrift, 
which  the  Fathers  as  unanimously  condemned.  In 
books  for  the  training  of  confessors,  the  taking  of 
interest  is  always  instanced  as  one  of  the  chief  forms 
of  the  deadly  sin ;  buying  in  the  cheapest  market  and 
selling  in  the  dearest  is  another  form.  The  penitent 
was  obliged  to  confess  such  actions  as  these,  and 
could  not  be  shriven  until  he  had  promised  to  make 
such  amends  as  were  possible.1 

This  teaching  is  not  only  to  be  found  in  Aquinas 
and  other  encyclopaedists  and  in  popular  manuals  of 
devotion,  but  becomes  an  integral  part  of  Church  law 
itself.  Canon  law,  or  Church  law,  was  only  very 
gradually  codified.  At  first,  like  all  forms  of  law,  it 
is  found  in  floating  traditions  and  customs.  In  course 
of  its  compilation,  it  is  developed  or  modified  accord- 
ing to  the  particular  tendencies  of  the  age.  There  are 
several  strata  of  Canon  law;  the  first  compilation 
belongs  to  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century.  Con- 
siderable additions  are  made  about  a  hundred  years 
later  ;  a  third  compilation,  now  considerably  swollen, 
bears  the  date  of  1298;  a  fourth  belongs  to  the  early 
fourteenth  century.  The  first  two  compilations,  as  we 
should  expect,  are  more  frankly  social-democratic 
than  the  later,  or  rather,  the  later  reiterate  the  earlier 
law  with  all  kinds  of  reserves  and  modifications.  But 
the  law  of  the  Western  Church  lays  it  down  that,  in 
God's  original  intention  for  the  world,  the  use  of  all 
that  is  in  the  world  ought  to  be  common  to  all  men, 

1  Cf.  Marson,  Vox  Clamantium,  p.  215. 


1 82      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

The  earlier  compilations,  unimpeded  by  later  reserves, 
prohibit  every  kind  of  money  interest.  If  you  lend 
money  to  a  man  expecting  to  receive  from  him  more 
than  you  have  given,  you  are  a  usurer.  "  Usury  is 
whatever  is  added  to  the  capital,  whether  it  be  food, 
clothing,  or  whatever  else  you  like  to  call  it."1  All 
payment  of  money  in  return  for  the  giving  of  credit 
is  usury.  Prohibition  of  this  practice  appears  first 
in  a  bull  directed  by  Alexander  III.  in  1176  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Genoa,  which  city  was  then  struggling 
with  Pisa  for  commercial  supremacy  in  the  Medi- 
terranean. "  You  tell  us  it  often  happens  in  your  city 
that  people  buy  pepper,  or  cinnamon,  or  other  wares  at 
the  time  not  worth  more  than  £$  promising  to  pay  those 
from  whom  they  receive  them  £6  at  the  appointed 
time.  Though  contracts  of  this  kind  and  under 
such  a  form  cannot  strictly  be  called  usuries,  yet 
nevertheless  the  vendors  incur  guilt,  unless  they 
are  really  doubtful  whether  the  wares  will  be  worth 
more  or  less  at  the  time  of  payment.  Your  citizens 
therefore  will  do  well,  for  their  own  salvation,  to  cease 
from  such  contracts."2  St  Thomas  Aquinas  had 
said :  "  A  man  has  not  the  right  to  do  what  he  likes 
with  his  own,"  and  this  becomes  the  law  of  the  Church. 
In  some  cases,  a  lender  who  had  not  been  promptly 
paid  back  the  capital  had  taken  possession  of  the 
poor  man's  land.3  The  Canon  law  in  such  cases 
laid  it  down  as  sin,  if  he  did  not  restore  the  land 
immediately  he  had  received  from  its  produce  the 
value  of  the  sum  originally  lent.  The  law  appears  to 

1  Ashley,  vol.  i.  p.  158.  2  Quoted  by  Ashley,  vol.  i.  p.  160. 

8  Ashley,  vol.  i.  p.  159. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  183 

include  under  the  sin  of  usury  the  action  of  those 
who  do  not  lend  themselves,  but  retain  what  their 
fathers,  or  those  whose  wealth  they  have  inherited, 
had  received  through  usury,  and  also  to  condemn 
those  who  borrow  at  a  low  rate  of  interest  to  lend  at  a 
greater.  This,  in  any  case,  is  condemned  in  a  manual 
for  confessors  in  wide  use  in  the  later  Middle  Ages. 
The  Jewish  law  on  economic  questions  is  often 
referred  to,  as  are  also  the  precepts  of  the  Gospel. 
Rent  on  houses  is  apparently  allowed,  and  in  the  case 
of  those  who  could  not  earn  their  own  living,  Innocent 
III.  had  allowed  that  their  money  might  be  committed 
to  a  merchant  for  the  obtaining  of  moderate  gain. 
The  first  legal  prohibition  of  usury  was  passed  by  the 
Council  of  Nicaea  in  325,  but  only  applied  to  the 
clergy ;  the  prohibition  was  extended  to  the  laity  in 
Western  Europe  by  the  capitularies  of  Charles  the 
Great  and  the  councils  of  the  ninth  century.  Church 
legislation  clashed  with  the  Roman  law,  which  was 
studied  by  the  secular  lawyers  as  the  highest  embodi- 
ment of  human  wisdom,  and  which  permitted  usury, 
enforcing  the  payment  of  interest  as  well  as  capital. 

The  capitalist  had  no  right  to  a  reward,  in  the 
earlier  opinion  of  the  Church,  unless  of  course  his 
remuneration  was  not  that  of  a  capitalist,  but  of  an 
actual  trader  or  manager.  The  living  wage  was 
always  insisted  on  ;  but  it  is  in  the  Church's  legal 
theory  of  the  sources  of  wealth  that  Canon  law  con- 
flicts most  directly  with  modern  political  economy. 

It  has  been  usual  until  recently,  with  the  rank  and  file 
of  modern  economists,  to  speak  of  three  "factors,"  "instru- 
ments," "  agents,"  or  "  requisites  "  in  production,  viz.  land. 


i84      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

labour,  and  capital,  and  to  put  them  all  on  very  much  the 
same  level  of  importance.  Mediaeval  thinkers  saw  but  two, 
land  and  labour.  The  land  was  the  ultimate  source  of  all 
wealth  ;  but  it  needed  human  labour  to  win  from  it  what  it 
was  able  to  provide.  Labour,  therefore,  as  the  one  element 
in  production  which  depended  on  the  human  will,  became 
the  centre  of  their  doctrine.  All  wealth  was  due  to  the 
employment  of  labour  on  the  materials  furnished  by  nature; 
and  only  by  proving  that  labour  had  been  engaged  in 
bringing  about  the  result  could  the  acquisition  of  wealth  by 
individuals  be  justified.  "  God  and  the  labourer,"  as  one 
widely  read  theologian  expressed  it,  "  are  the  true  lords  of 
all  that  serves  for  the  use  of  man.  All  others  are  either 
distributors  or  beggars  "  ;  and  he  goes  on  to  explain  that  the 
clergy  and  gentry  are  debtors  to  the  husbandmen  and  crafts- 
men, and  only  deserve  their  higher  honour  and  reward  so 
far  as  they  fitly  perform  those  duties,  as  "ruling  classes," 
which  involve  greater  labour  and  greater  peril.  The  doctrine 
had  thus  a  close  resemblance  to  that  of  modern  socialists ; 
labour  it  regarded  both  as  the  sole  (human)  cause  of  wealth, 
and  also  as  the  only  just  claim  to  the  possession  of  wealth.1 

Mr  Ashley  goes  on  to  say  that  the  canonist 
doctrine  only  differed  from  modern  socialist  teach- 
ing on  this  point,  in  that  it  allowed  varying  rates  of 
remuneration  for  different  kinds  of  services.  This, 
however,  is  a  mistake,  for  modern  socialists  allow 
that  such  varying  rates  will,  in  all  probability,  obtain 
in  the  socialised  state. 

It  is  sometimes  objected  by  Christian  critics  of 
socialism  that  it  involves  compulsion,  and  that  the 
Church  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  compulsory 
measures.  This  argument  has  been  partly  considered 
in  a  previous  chapter. 

The  early  Christian  had  no  political  rights  ;  the 
political  power  of  the  Empire  was  used  to  crush 

1  Ashley,  vol.  i.  p.  393. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  185 

them  out  of  existence.  It  is  little  short  of  amazing 
that  under  such  circumstances  their  leaders  should 
not  have  developed  a  theory  of  the  essential  evil  of 
government  and  of  all  compulsion,  especially  if  they 
had  had  in  their  minds  a  picture  of  a  non-resistant 
Christ,  and  were  under  the  guidance  of  His  Holy 
Spirit.  Their  own  socialist  philosophy,  the  exist- 
ence of  which  these  particular  critics  do  not  seem  to 
deny,  could  under  these  circumstances  only  function 
in  voluntary  experiments,  in  semi-communism,  in  the 
giving  of  alms  considered  as  a  repayment  to  the 
poor,  as  a  debt  of  justice.  But  so  far  from  holding 
that  State  compulsion  was  essentially  antichristian, 
they  developed  the  doctrine  that  State  compulsion, 
the  pagan  compulsion  that  was  crushing  them  out 
of  existence,  was  in  its  essence  Divine.  We  find  in 
Church  tradition  nothing  of  that  horror  of  the  State 
which  haunts  the  mind  of  so  thorough-going  an 
individualist  as  Herbert  Spencer.  St  Basil  defines 
the  State  as  an  organised  whole,  the  parts  of  which 
are  men  trained  out  of  separate  aims  into  common 
life.  A  particularly  autocratic  ruler  or  despotic  form 
of  that  State  was  from  time  to  time  fiercely  opposed. 
We  have  already  referred  to  St  Ambrose's  opposi- 
tion to  the  Emperor,  and  there  are  in  later  centuries 
treatises  on  kingship  which  are  full  of  warning.  The 
king  must  appoint  rulers  who  must  protect  the  weak, 
and  not  lord  it  over  his  subjects  who  are  actually 
their  equals.  There  are  brave  sermons  in  the  ninth 
century,  especially  on  the  king  as  champion  of  the 
poor,  and  coronation  addresses  warning  kings  of  the 
fate  of  tyrants.  Sedulius  Scotus  threatens  ruin  to 


1 86      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

evil  monarchs,  who  are  described  as  lions  and  wolves. 
They  are  no  true  kings,  but  tyrants.  "  They  reign,  but 
not  by  Me."  But  even  these  opponents  of  particular 
tyrants  are  not  led  into  a  general  opposition  to 
governments  and  their  compulsions. 

There  was  never  any  question,  if  the  Church 
should  itself  be  in  the  position  to  obtain  political 
influence,  of  refusing  that  position  ;  and,  in  point  of 
fact,  immediately  it  was  able  to  function  politically  it 
did  so,  and  used  its  power  in  what  our  critics  them- 
selves call  a  socialist  direction.  John  Henry  Newman, 
still  an  orthodox  Anglican,  and  as  always  in  politics 
a  conservative,  has  no  doubts  upon  this  point : — 

Strictly  speaking,  the  Christian  Church  has  been  a 
visible  society  with  necessarily  a  political  power  and  party. 
It  may  be  a  party  triumphant  or  a  party  under  persecution, 
but  a  party  it  must  always  be  prior  in  existence  to  the  civil 
institutions  with  which  it  is  surrounded,  and  from  its  latent 
divinity  formidable  and  influential  to  the  end  of  time.  .  .  . 
If  the  primitive  believers  did  not  interfere  with  the  acts  of 
the  civil  government,  it  was  merely  because  they  had  no 
rights  enabling  them  legally  to  do  so.  Where  they  have 
rights  the  case  is  different.  .  .  .  Since  there  is  a  popular 
misconception  that  Christians,  and  especially  the  clergy  as 
such,  have  no  concern  in  temporal  affairs,  it  is  expedient 
to  take  every  opportunity  of  formally  denying  the  position 
and  demanding  a  proof  of  it.  In  truth,  the  Church  was 
framed  for  the  express  purpose  of  interfering  or  (as  irreligious 
men  will  say)  meddling  with  the  world.1 

Society  works  so  smoothly  and  politely  for  the 
comfortable  classes  that  they  forget  that  the  civilisa- 
tion which  secures  them  in  their  comforts  rests 
ultimately  upon  force.  By  force  they  took  the 

1  Newman,  History  of  the  Arians,  part  ii.  chap.  iii.  p.  264.  Quoted 
by  Marson,  ibid.}  p.  201, 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  187 

people's  land ;  by  force  they  secure  to  themselves  a 
certainty  of  interest  upon  the  wealth  produced  by 
the  majority :  the  rate  is  recoverable  at  law.  For 
behind  the  ballot  box  and  parliamentary  laws  are 
the  bars  of  prisons,  the  batons  of  the  police,  and  the 
bayonets  of  soldiers.  They  do  not  question  com- 
pulsory government  now.  They  are  only  shocked 
when  a  just  kind  of  compulsion  is  suggested  as 
substitute  for  an  unjust.  Anarchy  strictly  means 
no  government,  no  compulsion.  It  is  a  curious 
position  that  we  should  have  to  teach  Conservatives 
not  to  use  anarchist  arguments.  Man,  as  the  Chris- 
tian religion  teaches  us,  is  a  social  and  interdependent 
animal.  By  the  divine  law  of  his  nature  he  lives  in 
society,  and  the  fact  of  society  cannot  be  considered 
without  the  fact  of  force  of  some  sort  and  in  some 
degree.  If  we  were  to  be  independent,  says  St 
Chrysostom,  "  should  we  not  be  untamable  wild 
beasts?  By  force  and  necessity  God  has  subjected 
us  to  one  another"  (2  Cor.,  Homily  17). 

For  these  reasons  Christians  who  have  been 
trained  to  think  will  not  use  the  argument  that 
socialism  is  necessarily  wicked  because  it  involves 
compulsion.  There  is  nothing  in  their  New  Testa- 
ments to  lead  them  to  such  a  supposition  ;  everything 
in  their  traditions  contradicts  it. 

It  may  be  thought  that  I  have  drawn  too  roseate  a 
picture  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  that,  even  if  it  has 
been  proved  that  Church  thought  and  Church  legisla- 
tion modified  and  corrected  secular  law  in  a  socialist 
direction,  the  actual  results  did  not  amount  to  much. 
Some  will  bring  forward  the  evidence  of  the  peasants' 


1 88      SOCIALISM  IN   CHURCH  HISTORY 

rising  as  conflicting  with  my  contentions.  What 
cause  was  there  for  revolution  if  grievances  were  so 
few  ?  But  this  rebellion  predates  my  period,  and 
was  itself  among  the  many  causes  that  led  to  the 
later  prosperity.  Moreover,  few  people  understand 
revolutions.  The  slums  never  revolt.  There  is  a 
point  at  which  all  spirit  of  revolt  is  ground  out  of  the 
people.  "  It  is  a  popular  fallacy  that  long-continued 
oppression  and  misery  cause  revolutionary  impatience. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  while  the  bit  is  new  in  the 
mustang's  mouth  that  it  rears  and  plunges.  To  the 
fellahin  of  Egypt  poverty  and  exploitation  seem  as 
inevitable  as  the  fall  of  night  and  the  coming  of 
death." 1  When  a  people  saturated  with  memories  of 
better  days  are  forced  under  the  yoke,  rebellion  is 
inevitable.  Church  tradition  was  with  them ;  the 
landed  plutocracy  and  ecclesiastical  officialdom  were 
against  them.  It  was  the  rising  of  a  Catholic 
democracy  appealing  to  their  religion  in  justification 
of  rebellion.  They  were  led  by  priests  and  friars — 
Wat  Tyler,  John  Ball,  Jack  Straw — who,  if  they 
knew  little  of  Canon  law,  knew  much  of  the  Gospel 
to  which  itself  appealed.  For  over  twenty  years 
John  Ball  and  other  priests  had  been  preaching  up 
and  down  the  countryside.  Three  archbishops  had 
opposed  them.  The  sermon  that  led  Archbishop 
Langham  to  have  him  arrested  and  imprisoned  is 
characteristic  of  this  agitation. 

In  the  beginning  of  the  world  there  were  no  bondmen ; 
no  man  ought  to  become  bond  unless  he  has  done  treason 
to  his  lord,  such  treason  as  Lucifer  did  to  God.  But  you 

1  Rauschenbusch,  Christianity  and  the  Social  Crisis ;  p.  16. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  189 

and  your  lords,  good  people,  are  neither  angels  nor  spirits ; 
both  you  and  they  are  men,  men  formed  in  the  same 
similitude.  Why  then  should  you  be  kept  like  brute  beasts  ? 
and  why,  if  you  labour,  should  you  have  no  wages  ? 

Good  people,  things  will  never  go  well  in  England  so 
long  as  goods  be  not  in  common,  and  so  long  as  there  be 
villeins  and  gentlemen.  By  what  right  are  they  whom  men 
call  lords  greater  folk  than  we?  On  what  ground  have 
they  deserved  it  if  all  came  from  the  same  father  and 
mother,  Adam  and  Eve  ?  How  can  they  say  or  prove  that 
they  are  better  than  we,  if  it  be  not  that  they  make  us  gain 
for  them  what  they  spend  in  their  pride  ? 1 

One  of  John  Ball's  letters,  a  signal  for  the  rising, 
commences :  "  John  Ball,  Priest  of  St  Mary's,  greets 
well  all  manner  of  men,  and  bids  them,  in  the  name 
of  the  Trinity,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  to  stand 
together  manfully  in  truth."  The  organisation  of  the 
peasant  clubs  throughout  various  counties,  and  their 
intercommunion,  was  for  the  most  part  the  work  of 
the  clergy  of  the  English  Church.  "  Rarely  has  a 
democratic  movement  produced  such  men  of  character 
and  capacity  as  the  great  uprising  of  1381  produced  ; 
rarely  has  a  people  responded  to  its  leaders  as  the 
people  responded  in  that  year." 

What,  then,  were  the  aims  of  the  Church  in  the 
earlier  Middle  Ages,  in  so  far  as  they  affected  the 
material  and  social  life  of  men  ?  The  attempt  to 
develop  the  tradition  of  the  Gospel  and  the  early 
Fathers,  and  to  apply  it  to  the  social  life  of  their 
age.  The  opposition  to  interest,  the  doctrine  of  just 
price  and  living  wage,  the  regulations  of  commerce 
and  agriculture,  were  methods  expressing  the  Church's 
desire  that  men  should  live  justly  in  the  bond  of 

1   Wat  Tyler  and  the  Great  Uprising*  by  Joseph  Clayton. 


190      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

fellowship,  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  might  be 
established  in  their  midst.  We  have  noted  the 
intimacy  between  theology  and  politics  in  Canon  law. 
The  greatest  book  of  the  Middle  Ages,  dealing  at 
such  length  with  economic  questions,  is  given  a 
theological  title  (the  Summa  Theologia).  Anything 
approaching  a  defence  of  plutocracy  or  an  individu- 
alistic commercialism  is  branded  as  heresy.  The 
modern  divorce  between  theory  and  practice,  between 
God  and  man,  between  theology  and  politics  would  have 
got  short  shrift  in  those  days  ;  heresy  was  not  only 
deflection  from  right  theological  thinking,  but  accord- 
ing to  a  Church  law  of  1 3 1 1,  to  quote  one  among  many 
instances,  "  If  anyone  fall  into  the  error  of  daring 
pertinaciously  to  affirm  that  to  engage  in  usury  is  not 
a  sin,  we  decree  that  he  shall  be  punished  as  a 
heretic,  and  enjoin  all  ordinaries  and  inquisitors  to 
proceed  with  rigour  against  any  suspected  of  this 
heresy." l 

There  has  been  more  than  one  attempt,  on  the  part 
of  certain  critics,  to  do  away  with  the  value,  in  a 
socialist  direction,  of  the  early  and  mediaeval  anti- 
usury  pronouncements  and  legislation.  The  opposi- 
tion, it  is  contended,  is  based  on  an  absurd  miscon- 
ception of  the  nature  of  money.  But  the  mediaeval 
conception  of  money  was  purely  incidental.  If  one  of 
the  arguments  used  to  defend  a  certain  proposition  is 
discovered  to  be  unsound,  it  does  not  necessarily 
invalidate  that  proposition,  nor  does  its  defender 
abandon  the  position  for  that  reason.  And  what  was 
the  essential  position  of  the  Church  ?  That  the  poor 

1  Ashley,  vol.  ii.  p.  150. 


THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE  191 

should  not  be  exploited ;  that  all  should  be,  in  their 
various  stations,  contributors  and  producers.  It  was 
merely  a  repetition  of  the  earlier  economic  law,  "  If  any 
will  not  work,  neither  shall  he  eat." 

We  are  not  bound  by  the  letter  of  the  earlier  Canon 
law,  though,  if  we  were  so  bound  in  it,  we  should  be 
compelled  to  fight  the  present  system  to  the  death. 
We  are  bound  by  the  spirit  of  that  law,  for  it  is  the 
spirit  of  the  earlier  tradition  and  of  the  Gospel.  A 
new  form  or  outward  letter  is  developing  in  our  own 
day,  which  more  adequately  safeguards  and  expresses 
the  Church's  philosophy  of  the  common  life.  That 
form  is  economic  socialism. 


VIII 
THE  REFORMATION 

Recapitulation — Protestant  and  Catholic  ideas  contrasted — Protestant 
individualism  the  mother  of  modern  commercialism — Individualistic 
and  Puritan  tendencies  in  Catholic  Communions — Modifications  and 
evasions   of  the  Canon  law — Mr  Ashley  whitewashes  the  later 
practice  of  the  Church — Jesuit   and   Calvinist   defences   of  com- 
mercialism —  Molinseus  :    a   farcical  condemnation,    1 546  —  Pius 
VIII,   1830  :  contrast  with  St  Thomas  Aquinas — Rigorism  and 
corruption — John   Major,    1600,   Papist   and    anti-Catholic — The 
Blessed  Thomas  More's  evidence  on  the  miseries  of  the  poor — 
Protestantism    indirectly  pro-plutocratic — Calvin,    the    true    and 
honest    Protestant — More   and   Calvin   contrasted — Protestantism 
boldly    justifies    usury  —  Lutheranism,    a    compromise  —  Luther 
supported  by  the  plutocracy :  attacks  the  peasants — Luther  some- 
times denies  the  right  of  usury — Melancthon,  the  complete  Pro- 
testant individualist — Nitti's  evidence   on   Church   leniency  and 
feudal  severity — Papal  claims  and    pre-Reformation  abuses — The 
English  Reformation  and  the  people's  religion — The  Great  Pillage 
— Thomas    Hancock's   quotation — The   Anglican  interdependent 
ideal   is   Catholic  —  Papist   uniformity  broke   unity  —  Cranmer's 
action  quoted — Lever  on  the  parliamentary  permission  to  usury — 
His  protest  effectual — Anglican  bishops  denounce  the  aristocracy 
and  plutocracy— The  Anglican  Church  against  interest  and  land- 
grabbing—jewel  on  five  per  cent,  as  theft  and  murder— Latimer 
before  the   landlords — Latimer  quoted  by  Bishop  Gore  —  Other 
Anglican  divines  quoted— Protestant  leaven  at  work  :  Bullinger's 
decades — Anti-democratic  Puritanism — William  Laud,  the  martyr- 
archbishop— Laud,  the  enemy  of  property  and  Puritanism — The 
Puritan    "liberty"   and    its    defence   of    slavery — Individualistic 
attack   on   the  liturgy  and   catechism — Is    the  Papal  Church  the 
friend  of  the  poor  ? — Between  the  millstones — The  Restoration. 


VIII 

THE    REFORMATION 

"  The  enormous  increase  of  money  which  had  been  produced  by  the 
trade  of  Uzziah's  reign  threatened  to  overwhelm  the  simple  economy 
under  which  every  family  had  its  croft.  As  in  many  another  land  and 
period,  the  social  problem  was  the  descent  of  wealthy  men,  land-hungry, 
upon  the  rural  districts.  They  made  the  poor  their  debtors,  and 
bought  out  the  peasant  proprietors.  They  absorbed  into  their  power 
numbers  of  homes,  and  had  at  their  individual  disposal  the  lives  and 
the  happiness  of  thousands  of  their  fellow-countrymen.  Isaiah  had 
cried,  '  Woe  upon  them  that  join  house  to  house,  that  lay  field  to  field, 
till  there  be  no  room  for  the  common  people,  and  the  inhabitants  of  the 
rural  districts  grow  fewer  and  fewer.'  Micah  pictures  the  recklessness 
of  those  plutocrats — the  fatal  ease  with  which  their  wealth  enabled 
them  to  dispossess  the  yeomen  of  Judah.  '  They  covet  fields  and  seize 
them,  houses  and  lift  them  up.  So  they  crush  a  good  man  and  his 
home,  a  man  and  his  heritage.'  This  is  the  evil — the  ease  with  which 
wrong  is  done  in  the  country  !  '  It  lies  to  the  power  of  their  hands  ; 
they  covet  and  seize.'  And  what  is  it  that  they  get  so  easily — not 
merely  field  and  house,  so  much  land  and  stone  and  lime  ;  it  is  human 
life,  with  all  that  makes  up  personal  independence,  and  the  security  of 
home  and  of  the  family.  .  .  .  The  tyranny  of  wealth  was  aided  by  the 
bribed  and  unjust  judges.  .  .  .  But  meantime  Micah  feels  that  by 
themselves  the  economic  wrongs  explain  and  justify  the  doom  impending 
upon  the  nation.  .  .  .  The  rich  in  their  immoral  confidence  that 
Jehovah  was  neither  weakened  nor  could  permit  such  a  disaster  to  fall 
on  His  own  people,  tell  the  prophet  that  his  sentence  of  doom  on  the 
nation,  and  especially  on  themselves,  is  absurd,  impossible.  They  cry 
the  eternal  cry  of  respectability  :  '  God  can  mean  no  harm  to  the  like 
of  us.  His  words  are  good  to  them  that  walk  uprightly,  and  we  are 
conscious  of  being  such.  What  you,  prophets,  have  charged  us  with 


V 

196      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

are  nothing  but  natural  transactions.'  .  .  .  They  pride  themselves  that 
all  is  stable  and  God  is  with  them  ;  .  .  .  they  feel  at  ease,  yet  injustice 
can  never  mean  rest.  .  .  . 

* '  While  Micah  spoke  he  had  wasted  lives  and  bent  backs  before  him. 
His  speech  is  elliptic  till  you  see  his  finger  pointing  at  them.  Pinched 
peasant-faces  peer  between  all  his  words  and  fill  the  ellipses.  And 
among  the  living  poor  to-day  are  there  not  starved  and  bitter  faces — 
bodies  with  the  blood  sucked  from  them,  with  the  Divine  image  crushed 
out  of  them  ?  .  .  .  Many  families  of  the  middle  class  are  nourished 
by  the  waste  of  the  lives  of  the  poor.  To  a  large  employer  of  labour, 
who  was  complaining  that  his  employees,  by  refusing  to  live  at  the  low 
scale  of  the  Belgian  workmen,  were  driving  trade  out  of  the  country, 
the  present  writer  once  said  :  '  Would  it  not  meet  your  wishes  if, 
instead  of  your  workmen  being  levelled  down,  the  Belgians  were 
levelled  up  ?'  His  answer  was,  '  I  care  not  so  long  as  I  get  my  profits.' 
He  was  a  religious  man,  a  liberal  giver  to  his  Church,  and  he  died 
leaving  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  pounds." — GEORGE  ADAM 
SMITH,  The  Twelve  Prophets,  chap,  xxvi.1 

WE  have  seen  that  the  Catholic  conception  of 
religion  involves  two  theories  which  dominate  modern 
socialism,  theories  concerning  the  body  and  concern- 
ing fellowship.  The  doctrine  of  both  Church  and 
socialism  concerning  the  body  is,  that  outward, 
sensuous,  material  things  count ;  that  to  treat  man's 
body  as  vile  or  of  no  account  is  to  wound  his  whole 
personality ;  to  ignore  man's  physical  needs  is 
sacrilege  ;  that,  though  man  does  not  live  by  bread 
alone,  he  does  live  by  bread ;  that  the  physical 
instincts,  though  dangerous  and  often  leading  men 
into  sin,  are  not  essentially  evil  but  good  ;  that  the 
mission  of  the  Church  is  to  redeem,  not  ghosts  nor 
beasts,  nor  mere  creatures  of  intellect,  but  men ;  and 
that  man  is  a  tri-unity  of  body,  mind,  and  spirit.  The 
doctrine  of  both  the  Church  and  socialism  concerning 

1  Compare  this  quotation  with  the  evidence  of  the  state  of  England  in 
the  following  chapter. 


THE  REFORMATION  197 

fellowship  is  that  the  individual  is  not  redeemed, 
saved,  built  up  into  a  rich  and  generous  personality 
in  isolation,  but  in  association.  There  is  a  wide  sense 
in  which  the  mediaeval  phrase,  "  Extra  ecclesiam  nulla 
salus,"  is  true. 

When  the  Catholic  philosophy  dominated  Europe, 
we  have  seen  it  express  itself  in  economic  theories, 
and  to  some  extent  practice,  which  would  be  described 
by  individualists  of  to-day  as  disastrous  socialism. 

It  should  be  made  quite  clear  that  the  mediaeval 
Church  was  not  in  practice  dominant,  but  was  only 
able  considerably  to  modify  existing  anti-Christian 
ideas  and  institutions.  It  must  again  be  insisted 
that  this  modification  was  not  identical  with  economic 
socialism,  but  that  the  main  lines  of  attack  by 
Churchmen  and  others  to-day  upon  economic  socialism 
are  equally  an  attack  upon  the  practice  of  their  Church 
in  its  quick  and  robust  ages,  and  upon  the  funda- 
mental and  orthodox  ideals  of  Catholicism  which 
formerly  expressed  themselves  in  anti-interest  and 
in  sumptuary  legislation,  and  now  express  themselves 
in  economic  socialism.  If  we  contrast  the  Protestant 
conception  of  religion  with  the  Catholic,  and  trace 
the  course  of  economic  history  after  the  Reformation, 
we  shall  notice  that  in  both  theological  doctrine  and 
economic  practice  Protestantism  directly  contradicts 
the  Catholic  ideal.  We  must,  however,  remember 
that  no  man  is  absolutely  Protestant  or  Catholic,  for 
no  man  is  absolutely  logical. 

Luther,  for  instance,  retains  many  Catholic  ideas  ; 
Calvin  is  more  essentially  Protestant ;  and  immediately 
we  have  said  that,  we  remember  that  Luther  was  not 


i98      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

uncompromisingly  opposed  to  the  earlier  mediaeval 
conception  of  economics,  while  Calvin  went  beyond 
even  the  Jesuits  in  his  approval  of  usury.  We  shall 
find  the  Roman  Church  becoming  more  and  more 
Protestant,  laying  less  and  less  stress  on  the  dogmas 
of  fellowship  and  of  material  sanctity.  It  is  often  and 
rightly  said  that  Protestant  individualism  is  the  mother 
of  modern  commercialism  ;  but  we  must  remember 
that  there  are  certain  Catholic  tendencies  in  Protestant 
bodies,  especially  in  the  present  development  of  those 
bodies,  and  that  anti-Catholic  individualism  has  made 
considerable  inroads  into  the  historic  Churches,  the 
Church  of  Rome,  the  Church  of  Russia,  the  Church 
of  England. 

These  individualistic  tendencies  are  to  be  noticed 
in  the  pre-Reformation  period.  Just  as  there  has  from 
time  to  time  been  a  wave  of  Puritanism  sweeping  over 
the  life  of  Catholic  bodies  which  came  near  to  denying 
the  orthodox  doctrine  of  the  body,  so  there  have  been 
waves  of  individualism  in  Catholic  countries,  theories 
which  came  near  to  denying  the  orthodox  doctrine 
concerning  fellowship.  A  wave  of  this  kind  was 
passing  over  Europe  in  the  later  Middle  Ages.  A 
Puritan  tendency  is  noticeable  in  the  pre-Reformation 
Churches  of  France  and  England.  Preachers  who 
fancied  themselves  to  be  unimpeachable  Catholics 
were  popularising  a  base  Sabbatarianism,  appealing 
to  the  intricate  outward  letter  of  the  Jewish  law  for 
a  precedent,  and  interpreting  that  letter  in  the  most 
lifeless  and  inhuman  sense.  But  neither  the  Roman 
Church  nor  the  post-Reformation  English  Church 
would  officially  endorse  such  heresy ;  the  Roman 


THE  REFORMATION  199 

Church  was  more  willing  to  compromise  with  the 
heresy  that  arose  in  another  direction.  Towards  the 
end  of  the  Middle  Ages  ecclesiastical  lawyers  and 
theologians  were  beginning  to  make  all  kinds  of 
evasions  in  the  matter  of  the  doctrine  of  fellowship 
and  its  expression  in  socialistic  legislation.  Even 
Mr  Ashley,  who  stands  almost  alone  among  expert 
historians  of  the  period,  in  his  endeavour  to  minimise 
the  break  between  earlier  and  later  canonists,  admits 
that  these  modifications  and  evasions  do  sometimes 
amount  to  the  assumption  of  an  altogether  new 
position.  Langenstein,  even  late  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  only  defends  rent  charges  from  the  guilt  of 
usury  under  special  circumstances.  To  live  upon 
rents,  if  such  a  source  of  income  enabled  nobles  to 
live  in  luxurious  idleness,  or  plebeians  to  desert  honest 
toil,  is  a  violation  of  the  Divine  command,  "  In  the 
sweat  of  thy  brow  thou  shalt  eat  bread."  During  the 
fourteenth  century  the  more  conservative  theologians 
still  brought  all  commercial  and  political  practices  to 
that  particular  test :  did  they  or  did  they  not  enable 
men  to  live  by  means  of  rent  and  interest  upon  the 
wealth  produced  by  the  working  communities,  and 
to  give  no  adequate  service  for  wealth  so  extracted 
from  the  producers  ?  Church  officialdom,  however, 
begins  to  speak  with  less  certain  voice,  and  veers 
round  to  the  side  of  parliaments  of  landlords  and 
plutocrats.  Mr  Ashley  would  have  us  believe  that, 
with  the  rise  of  the  middle  classes  and  the  develop- 
ment of  modern  commercialism,  the  Church  merely 
adapted  her  teaching  to  the  new  needs,  altering  the 
letter,  but  preserving  the  spirit.  The  later  canonists 


200     SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

met  the  business  man's  desire  for  exemption  from 
the  earlier  law  concerning  usury,  not  by  a  frank 
avowal  that  usury  was  justifiable,  but  by  allowance 
of  an  infinite  number  of  exceptions  to  the  general 
rule.  Mr  Ashley  is  right  when  he  says  that  "  the 
original  prohibition  had  really  aimed  at  preventing 
the  oppression  of  the  weak  by  the  economically 
strong,"  but  he  goes  on  to  say  that  the  "gradual 
exemption  from  the  prohibition  of  methods  of  employ- 
ing money  which  did  not  involve  oppression,  instead 
of  obscuring  the  original  principle,  may  have  brought 
it  out  more  clearly."  It  is  the  assumption  that  the 
methods  of  middle-class  commercialism  do  not  involve 
oppression  which  must  be  emphatically  challenged. 
The  judgments  of  the  later  Papal  courts  in  the  matter 
of  rent  charges  are  suspect,  when  we  remember  that 
a  large  part  of  the  revenues  of  ecclesiastical  bodies 
consisted  of  such  charges.  The  pro-rent  judgments 
of  Martin  V.  and  of  Calixtus  III.  become  the  basis 
of  an  actual  addition  to  the  Canon  law,  which,  however, 
dates  in  the  post-Reformation  period. 

It  is  immensely  significant  that  the  philosophy  of 
the  undivided  Church,  and  the  political  expressions  of 
that  philosophy,  should  have  been  frankly  socialistic ; 
that  after  the  schism  of  East  and  West  the  socialist 
teaching  is  not  quite  so  evident,  but  that  the  Western 
Church  was  still  making  an  effort  to  uphold  the 
social  tradition  and  to  apply  it ;  that  the  socialism 
of  the  Church  is  fainter  and  less  evident  in  the  years 
immediately  preceding  the  Reformation,  and  that  the 
further  schism  known  as  the  Reformation,  which  rent 
the  body  of  Christ  into  many  fragments,  marks  the 


THE  REFORMATION  201 

decline  of  Catholic  socialism,  that  is,  of  essential 
Catholicism  in  both  the  Protestant  and  the  Papal 
communions.  The  Franciscans  are  among  the  worst 
offenders ;  their  popularity  was  therefore  great  with 
the  business  men  and  financiers  of  the  times.  The 
Jesuits,  of  course,  being  a  purely  post-Reformation 
Order,  are  the  defenders  of  individualist  commercial- 
ism as  against  the  older  Catholic  belief;  they  are 
anxious  to  prevent  the  moral  standards  of  the  Church 
from  coming  into  too  violent  a  collision  with  the 
necessities  of  everyday  life.  But  the  Jesuits  were 
only  filling  up  the  measure  of  their  immediate 
fathers,  for  the  Lateran  Council,  under  Leo  X., 
had  adopted  many  of  the  modifications  and  contra- 
dictions of  the  later  canonists,  defining  usury  merely 
as  "  gain  sought  to  be  acquired  from  the  use  of  a  thing 
not  in  itself  fruitful  without  labour,  expense,  or  risk 
on  the  part  of  the  lender."  Mr  Ashley  himself  admits 
that  from  this  time  "  Churchmen  were  more  and  more 
reconciled  to  the  idea  of  payment  for  the  use  of  money, 
even  by  the  poor  who  could  make  no  business  investment 
of  the  loan" 1  In  face  of  this  new  departure,  the  frank 
justification  of  usury  in  1546  by  Molinaeus  is  not 
surprising,  and  he  might  well  have  been  spared  the 
charge  of  heresy  brought  against  him  by  those  who 
would  preserve  the  condemnation  of  the  term  usury, 
when  they  had  altogether  ceased  to  condemn  the 
thing. 

It  may  be  added  that  leaders  of  the  Roman  Church 
have   been  more   and    more   inclined  to  justify  the 
principle  of  usury,  but  that  even  the  Congregation  of 
1  Cf.  Ashley,  ii.  p.  447. 


202      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  Holy  Office,  with  the  approval  of  Pius  VIII.,  in 
1830  did  not  dare  whitewash  usurers.  They  decided 
that  those  persons  who  regarded  the  fact  that  the 
civil  law  fixed  a  certain  rate  of  interest  as  in  itself  a 
sufficient  reason  for  taking  interest  were  "  not  to  be 
disturbed." l  Contrast  this  with  St  Thomas  Aquinas, 
who  distinctly  lays  it  down  that  even  if  interest  is 
permitted  by  law,  that  does  not  make  the  action  any 
less  guilty.2 

The  defenders  of  this  new  departure  in  the  direction 
of  commercialism  have  to  account  for  the  fact  that  it 
belongs  to  a  period  admitted  by  Protestants  and 
Romanists  alike  to  be  corrupt,  It  was  an  age  of 
literalism  which  may  be  compared,  for  its  sheer 
futility,  with  the  rigorist  and  literalist  age  which 
preceded  the  coming  of  Christ.  In  both  periods 
religion  had  come  to  consist  in  detailed  obedience 
to  ceremonial  laws  which  had  become  meaningless. 
In  both  ages  the  Pharisees,  who  were  lovers  of  money, 
saw  to  it  that  modifications  should  be  made  in  favour 
of  those  who  were  able  to  purchase  them.  The 
monasteries  were  in  their  decadence;  their  later 
alms-givings  encouraged  rascally  idlers,  and  were  not 
of  much  help  to  the  genuine  poor.  The  motive  of 
alms-giving  was  even  corrupted.  People  were  to  give 
liberally,  not  because  alms  was  a  just  debt  and  we 
must  hunger  and  thirst  after  justice,  but  because 
heavenly  comfort  in  the  future  could  so  be  purchased, 
and  the  pains  of  purgatory  be  lessened.  Masses  for 
the  dead,  which  in  their  essential  idea  are  defensible 

1  Churches  and  Usury,  A.  S.  Rose,  p.  31. 

2  Cf.  R.  W.  Carlyle,  Economic  Review,  January  1894. 


THE  REFORMATION  203 

enough,  were  actually  defended  for  the  grossest 
reasons.  The  Mass  itself,  the  social  meal  which 
had  been  the  safeguard  of  the  Catholic  ideal  of 
fellowship,  had  been  turned  into  a  private,  individual- 
istic affair.  Religion  was  becoming  a  question  of 
payment,  and  the  pious  were  those  who  had  the 
longest  purse.  The  liberal  foundations  of  hospitals 
for  the  relief  of  the  sick  and  needy  had  been  diverted 
into  the  pockets  of  lazy  and  plutocratic  priests,  who 
thus  lived  upon  the  bounty  of  the  poor.  Glaring 
abuses  in  connection  with  the  doctrine  of  indulgences 
were  but  one  of  many  signs  of  the  general  decadence. 
It  was  all  very  well  for  a  later  canonist,  John  Major, 
a  Scotchman,1  to  urge  the  prohibition  of  vagabondage 
and  begging ;  it  was  only  part  of  his  general  policy, 
for  he  had  "shown  himself  open  to  the  lessons  of 
practical  life,"  in  accepting  Eck's1  bold  attempt  to 
justify  the  taking  of  interest  in  the  modern  sense;  but 
vagabondage  and  beggary  had  been  enormously 
increased  by  the  agrarian  changes  which  deprived 
tenants  and  cottagers  of  their  land  and  made  them 
wanderers  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  Blessed 
Thomas  More  thus  describes  the  results  of  the 
evictions  then  taking  place : — 

"  By  one  means  or  other,  either  by  hook  or  crook,  they 
must  needs  depart  away,  poor  wretched  souls — men,  women, 
husbands,  wives,  fatherless  children,  widows,  woful  mothers 
with  their  young  babes,  and  their  whole  household,  small  in 
substance  and  much  in  number,  as  husbandry  requireth 
many  hands.  Away  they  trudge,  I  say,  out  of  their  known 
and  accustomed  houses,  finding  no  place  to  rest  in.  All 
their  household  stuff,  which  is  very  little  worth,  though  it 

1  A  Papist  writer,  circ.  1600. 


204      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

might  well  abide  the  sale,  yet,  being  suddenly  thrust  out, 
they  be  constrained  to  sell  it  for  a  thing  of  nought.  And 
when  they  have  wandered  abroad  till  that  be  spent,  what 
can  they  then  else  do  but  steal,  and  then  justly,  pardy, 
be  hanged,  or  else  go  about  abegging  ?  And  yet  then  also 
they  be  cased  in  prison  as  vagabonds,  because  they  go  about 
and  work  not ;  whom  no  man  will  set  to  work,  though  they 
never  so  willingly  proffer  themselves  thereto.  For  one 
shepherd  or  hefdman  is  enough  to  eat  up  that  ground  with 
cattle,  to  the  occupying  whereof  about  husbandry  many 
hands  were  requisite." 

The  Act  of  1533-34,  limiting  the  number  of  sheep  any 
one  man  might  keep,  gives  a  similar  account.  Owing,  it 
declares,  to  the  union  of  farms  and  the  change  from  arable 
to  pasture,  "  a  marvellous  number  of  the  people  of  this  realm 
...  be  so  discouraged  with  misery  and  poverty  that  they 
fall  daily  to  theft,  robbery  and  other  inconvenience,  or 
pitifully  die  from  hunger  and  cold."1 

I  have  said  that  Protestantism  has  its  expression 
in  economic  practice,  and  that  both  in  philosophy  and 
practice  it  is  the  opposite  of  that  Catholic  theory  of 
life  to  which  the  earlier  Church  was  moving  ;  I  have 
suggested  that  in  a  very  real  sense  the  Roman  Church 
has  narrowed  down  into  an  introspective  Protestant- 
ism, since  the  schismatic  period  of  the  Reformation. 
It  is  curious  to  notice  that  the  Council  of  Trent, 
although  it  reformed  many  of  the  grosser  external 
abuses,  tied  the  Papal  communion  down  to  rigorist 
and  anti-Catholic  conceptions.  Meanwhile,  on  the 
Continent  at  least,  religion  was  by  the  Protestants 
being  switched  off  the  human  democratic  line,  on  to 
lines  which  would  not  bring  it  into  conflict  with  the 
economic  developments  of  the  middle  classes ;  for 
when  one  speaks  of  the  economic  expression  of 

1  Quoted  by  Ashley,  vol.  ii.  p.  353. 


THE  REFORMATION  205 

Protestantism,  one  must  remember  that  it  is  not 
direct  but  indirect.  For  the  Protestant  religion,  in 
its  clearest  and  most  logical  aspect,  divorces  body 
from  spirit,  and  preaches  that  our  faith  is  alone  con- 
cerned with  men's  individual  souls  and  with  questions 
of  spirituality.  There  have  been  attempts  made 
to  prove  that  Luther  and  Calvin  were  directly 
concerned  as  religious  teachers  with  social  reform,  in 
that  they  contributed  to  a  theory  of  the  separate 
functions  of  Church  and  State  which  the  majority 
of  people  nowadays  have  come  to  accept.  Religion 
they  held  to  be  concerned  with  the  spiritual  side  of 
man,  statecraft  with  the  material.  This  theory  may 
or  may  not  incidentally  have  led  to  wise  modern 
views,  but  in  its  origins  it  only  serves  to  prove  my 
point.  By  teaching  that  religion,  as  such,  is  not 
concerned  with  politics,  Protestantism  has  played 
into  the  hands  of  plutocracy,  and  has  rightly  found 
among  plutocrats  its  keenest  defenders. 

Hence  the  Continental  Reformation  may,  in  some 
senses,  be  considered  to  have  completed  the  corruption 
of  the  immediately  pre-Reformation  Church ;  for 
although  the  protest  was  on  the  side  of  honesty,  as 
against  evasion  and  a  ceremonialism  which  had  once 
lived,  but  had  now  stiffened  into  the  rigidity  of  a  corpse, 
yet  it  was  on  the  side  of  such  honesty  as  that  of 
Molinseus,whom  we  have  seen  demanding  that  tortuous 
evasions  should  be  abandoned,  not  that  men  might 
return  to  the  earlier  condemnation  of  usury,  but  that 
they  might  frankly  defend  it  by  an  honest  break  with 
their  traditions.  If  one  would  study  Protestantism 
in  its  essence,  it  is  to  Calvin  rather  than  to  Luther 


206      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

that  one  must  go.  Calvin  hated  indulgences,  hated  the 
buying  and  selling  of  religion,  hated  the  later  evasions 
of  Canon  law  ;  so  did  Sir  Thomas  More.  Both  were 
honest,  both  attacked  the  corruptions  of  their  age; 
but  where  More  desired  an  honest  Catholicism,  Calvin 
desired  an  honest  Protestantism ;  it  was  not  only 
dead  ceremonial  he  objected  to,  but  ceremonial  of 
any  sort;  it  was  not  only  the  petty  evasions  of 
Canon  law  he  minded,  but  the  Canon  law  of  which 
they  were  the  evasions.  More  was  literally  a  reformer, 
for  he  urged  men  to  re-form  an  ancient  Church  by 
understanding  and  being  seized  upon  by  the  living 
spirit  of  its  tradition.  More's  reformed  religion 
would  once  more  quite  inevitably  and  quite  naturally 
have  blossomed  forth  in  sensuous  and  ceremonial 
joy  and  in  common  fellowship.  Calvin's  religion  was 
essentially  a  denial  of  these  things. 

We  find  in  Calvinism  the  peculiarly  Protestant 
theories  that  men  are  vile,  that  men's  bodies  are  con- 
temptible, that  religion  is  a  private  affair,  that  man 
cannot  be  saved  through  the  mediumship  and  ministry 
of  men ;  therefore  no  man  shall  come  between  "  my 
soul  and  my  God."  In  Calvin's  teaching  we  find  that 
genesis  of  Protestant  individualism  which  regards 
religion  "as  a  little  private  transaction  of  a  strictly 
confidential  character  between  a  man  and  his  God." 
Henceforward  the  individualist  plutocrats  who  are 
greedily  capturing  the  land  and  capital,  and  are 
making  everything  private  property,  are  inclined  to 
substitute  individualist  ideas  of  God  for  the  common 
Fatherhood  of  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Catholic 
liturgies.  One  finds  them  continually,  in  their  books 


THE  REFORMATION  207 

of  devotion,  talking  of  "  my  God  "  as  if  He  were  as 
much  their  private  property  as  their  houses  and  their 
servants.  It  was  indeed  providential  for  the  middle 
classes,  who  were  then  coming  into  existence,  that 
this  individualist  religion,  both  in  the  Roman,  and 
even  more  in  the  Protestant  Churches,  should  have 
been  ready  to  their  hand.  Calvin  became  the 
champion  of  plutocracy,  and  his  doctrines  were 
eagerly  espoused  by  those  who  were  making  a  little 
Heaven  for  themselves  on  earth  by  plundering  the 
people's  possessions,  and  looked  forward  to  a  little 
Heaven  above,  which  was  to  be  a  close  preserve  for 
a  small  aristocracy  of  the  pious.  Bossuet  tells  us 
that  Calvin  was  the  first  theologian  to  propound  the 
modern  distinction  between  interest  and  usury;  and 
if  this  is  doubtful,  it  is  at  least  true  that  he  first 
popularised  this  modern  distinction.  Ashley's  com- 
ment is  intensely  significant :  "  The  judgment  of 
Calvin  was  certainly  of  much  influence  in  weakening 
the  old  repugnance  to  usury  ;  especially  as  the  great 
commercial  people  of  the  next  century,  the  Dutch, 
chanced  to  be  Calvinists.  Moreover,  it  is  at  once 
apparent  that  a  justification  of  usury  itself  was  far 
more  impressive  than  the  allowance  of  any  number 
of  exceptions.  Calvin's  teaching  was,  therefore,  in  a 
very  real  sense  a  turning-point  in  the  history  of 
European  thought."  It  must,  however,  be  added 
that  even  Calvin  shrank  from  a  defence  of  interest  in 
its  grosser  forms,  for,  according  to  him,  usury  must 
not  be  demanded  from  men  in  need,  nor  must  any 
man  be  forced  to  pay  when  oppressed  by  need  or 
calamity.  In  after  centuries  his  authority  is  quoted 


208      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

for  the  later  Protestant  proposition  that  interest,  so  far 
from  being  sinful,  is  in  accord  with  the  Word  of  God. 

We  must  not  look  in  those  times  of  storm  and 
stress  for  strictly  logical  systems  of  religion.  Even 
Calvin,  prince  of  logicians,  left  the  Protestant  system 
incomplete  ;  the  Neo-Calvinists  filled  up  the  gaps. 

Lutheranism  was  far  less  logical,  far  more  a  protest 
of  the  heart  than  of  the  head.  It  may  be  said  to  have 
resulted  in  a  compromise  between  Catholic  and 
Protestant  ideas,  Protestantism  largly  predominating. 
More  than  one  historian  has  contended  that  the 
Lutheran  Reformation  was,  in  reality,  a  religious 
reform  in  favour  of  the  interests  of  the  wealthy  classes 
in  Germany.  These  classes  were  becoming  powerful, 
but  were  still  excluded  from  political  expression ; 
their  representation  in  State  assemblies  was  merely 
nominal.  There  resulted  a  bitter  rivalry  between  the 
feudal  aristocracy  and  the  rich  industrialists,  who 
were  supported  by  the  lesser  nobles. 

In  the  meantime,  the  poverty-stricken  rural  population 
rose  up  against  their  despoilers ;  they  burnt  down  the 
castles  of  the  nobles,  and  swore  that  they  would  leave 
nothing  to  be  seen  upon  the  land  but  the  cabins  of  the 
poor.  The  rich  middle  class  seemed  at  first  to  side  with 
them,  and  at  Strasburg,  Nuremburg,  and  Ulm  the  peasants 
were  encouraged,  aided,  and  provided  for.  However,  the 
bourgeoisie  soon  grew  alarmed  at  the  spreading  of  insurrec- 
tion, and  made  common  cause  with  the  nobles  in 
smothering  the  revolt  in  the  rural  districts.  Luther,  who 
was  then  at  the  apex  of  his  power,  condemned  the  rising 
in  the  name  of  religion,  and  proclaimed  the  servitude  of 
the  people  as  holy  and  legitimate.  "  You  seek,"  wrote  he, 
"to  free  your  persons  and  your  goods.  You  desire  the 
power  and  the  goods  of  this  earth.  You  will  suffer  no 
wrong.  The  Gospel,  on  the  contrary,  has  no  care  for  such 


THE  REFORMATION  209 

things,  and  makes  exterior  life  consist  in  suffering,  sup- 
porting injustice,  the  cross,  patience,  and  contempt  of  life, 
as  of  all  the  things  of  this  world.  To  suffer  !  To  suffer  ! 
The  cross  !  The  cross  !  Behold  what  Christ  teaches ! " 
Were  not  these  teachings  given  in  the  name  of  the  faith  to 
a  famishing  people  in  revolt  against  the  tyranny  and  avidity 
of  the  ruling  aristocracy,  fatal  to  the  future  of  the  peasant 
masses,  whose  very  sufferings  were  thus  legitimatised  in  the 
name  of  the  religion  that  should  have  come  to  their  aid  ? l 

Luther's  attitude  is  very  puzzling.  He  admits  that 
the  claims-  of  the  peasants  are  not  contrary  to  natural 
law  or  to  equity,  but  quotes  Scripture  to  justify  his 
opposition  to  the  rebellion.  He  does  not  seem  ever 
to  have  made  up  his  mind  upon  the  subject  of 
interest ;  in  his  earlier  writings  he  describes  the 
middle-class  theory  as  a  pretext,  he  denounces  the 
grip-monies,  and  exclaims  :  "  Little  thieves  are  put  in 
the  stocks;  great  thieves  go  flaunting  in  gold  and 
silk."  He  is  convinced  that  no  form  of  usury  is 
Christian  in  which  payment  is  demanded  from  the 
deserving  poor ;  he  goes  further  than  Calvin  in  the 
Catholic  direction,  for  he  absolutely  condemns  the 
census  per sonalis,  i.e.  the  placing  of  a  charge  upon  so 
intangible  a  thing  as  an  artisan's  skill.  In  this  con- 
demnation he  would  seem  to  oppose,  by  implication, 
the  bulk  of  the  share-holding  and  interest-mongering 
of  the  present  day.  He  allows,  however,  many 
modifications  of  the  stricter  law,  and  is  by  no 
means  sound  on  the  subject  in  the  sense  of  the 
early  Church. 

Melancthon  is  much  more  uncompromisingly  in 
favour  of  interest,  his  only  reservation  being  that  it 

1  Nitti,  Catholic  Socialism,  p.  75. 

14 


210      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

should  be  moderate,  according  to  the  estimate  of  just 
men.  He  was  more  violent  than  Luther  in  his  denun- 
ciation of  the  communistic  theories  of  the  Anabaptists. 
He  regarded  with  horror,  the  canonist  doctrine  that 
property  belongs  essentially  to  God,  and  was  in  the 
first  place  given  to  all  men  in  common,  and  that  if, 
by  an  arrangement  of  human  law,  some  possess  more 
property  than  others,  they  must  regard  themselves, 
not  as  owners,  but  as  clerks  or  stewards  of  the  super- 
fluity of  riches,  and  that  what  human  law  has  arranged, 
human  law  can  alter.  According  to  Melancthon, 
property  exists  by  Divine  right.  To  deny  the  rights 
of  private  property  is  contrary  to  the  laws  of  nature 
and  the  precepts  of  the  Gospel.1 

It  would  not,  of  course,  be  accurate  to  say  that 
there  was  no  difference  between  the  post-Reformation 
Roman  theories  and  practice  and  extreme  Protestant 
theory  and  practice ;  and  merciless  as  has  been  the 
treatment  of  the  poor  in  both  Roman  Catholic  and 
Protestant  countries,  this  mercilessness  has  not  been 
so  deliberately  defended  by  Roman  as  by  Puritan 
apologists.  It  is  generally  admitted  that  the  condi- 
tion of  the  poor,  even  in  the  corrupt  period  immedi- 
ately preceding  the  Reformation,  was  not  so  hopeless 
as  it  became  when  the  Church  lost  her  estates.  Nitti 
describes  the  action  of  the  civil  power,  after  having 
stripped  the  Church  of  her  possessions,  pressing  an 
iron  hand  upon  the  starving  people  ;  the  barons 
oppressed  their  unhappy  vassals,  while  the  Church 
feudatories,  who  had  neither  daughters  to  marry  nor 
courts  to  keep  up,  were  very  clement  towards  the 

3  Melancthon,  Operat  Breitschneider  edition,  vol.  iii. 


THE  REFORMATION  211 

poor  peasantry.  While  the  unfortunate  serfs  of  the 
barons  were  harassed  with  continual  vexations,  the 
vassals  of  the  Church  were  treated  with  consideration. 
The  feudal  aristocracy  and  the  rich  bourgeoisie  are 
responsible  for  the  despoiling  of  the  Church.  In  the 
kingdom  of  Naples,  the  extortions  of  the  barons  were 
almost  unendurable ;  but  the  greatest  abbey  in  the 
south  of  Italy,  the  abbey  of  Cava,  renounced  all 
right  to  the  personal  labour  of  its  vassals,  and 
assumed  the  obligation  of  paying  them  adequate 
wages.  "  The  inhabitants  of  Cava,"  writes  a  liberal 
historian,  "enjoyed,  under  the  protection  of  the 
Monastery  of  the  Most  Holy  Trinity,  immunity  from 
taxes,  privileges  in  traffic,  the  use  of  an  almost  free 
port  at  Vietri ;  they  cultivated  fertile  lands  free  from 
burdens  without  the  oppression  of  angheria  or 
perangheria,  which  had  been  abolished  by  Abbot 
Philip  in  1322,  without  any  seigneurial  vexations,  in 
a  condition  almost  ex  lege,  not  being  subject  to  the 
king,  as  were  the  cities  of  the  demesne,  nor  to  the 
feudatories  ;  they  prospered  from  day  to  day,  till  they 
reached  such  a  height  of  prosperity  that  even  the 
Neapolitans  envied  their  flourishing  commerce  and 
great  wealth."1 

If  the  study  of  the  Reformation  generally  is  in- 
tricate, the  study  of  the  particular  course  it  took  in 
England  is  no  less  puzzling.  As  a  protest  against 
Rome,  both  in  England  and  on  the  Continent, 
nations  which  adopted  the  Reformation  had  come  to 
the  quite  definite  conclusion  that  the  claims  of  the 
Pope  had  grown  to  be  a  menace  to  the  welfare  of 

1  Quoted  by  Nitti,  Catholic  Socialism,  p.  78. 


212      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Christendom.     Cranmer,  at  Cambridge,  collected  the 
Papal  assumptions  ;  here  are  some  of  them  : — 

If  any  man  denies  that  the  Pope  is  ordained  of  God  to  be 
Primate  of  all  the  world,  he  is  an  heretic  and  cannot  be  saved. 

Princes'  laws  have  no  force  against  the  Pope's  decrees, 
and  to  oppose  such  decrees  is  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost. 

The  Pope  may  depose  kings  and  release  subjects  from 
oaths  of  obedience ;  appeal  to  him  is  final ;  he  may  use 
force  against  anybody.  He  is  above  all  councils. 

Neither  the  French  nor  the  English  Churches,  nor 
any  other  integral  portion  of  the  Catholic  Church  of 
Christ,  was  free  of  this  tyranny.  English  benefices 
were  handed  over  to  non-resident  Italian  priests  or  to 
mere  laymen.  In  spite  of  certain  Acts  of  Parliament 
and  the  protests  of  Archbishops  Peckham,Langton,and 
Grosseteste,  the  Canon  law,  by  its  corrupt  additions, 
made  the  Pope  an  imperialist  autocrat,  who  claimed 
absolute  rights  over  the  Ecclesia  anglicana  and  other 
national  Churches.  Roman  controversialists  would 
have  us  believe  that  the  cause  of  the  English  Reforma- 
tion is  to  be  found  in  the  lusts  of  the  English  king. 
It  would  be  as  difficult  as  it  would  be  undesirable  to 
whitewash  Henry  VIII.,  but  his  divorce  was  merely 
the  match  that  set  light  to  the  gunpowder.  The 
Pope  had  over  and  over  again  legitimatised  such  a 
union  as  was  proposed ;  but  Clement  was  between 
two  fires,  and  thought  he  could  rather  afford  to  offend 
the  English  king  than  Catherine's  nephew. 

That  the  Reformation  primarily  aimed  at  clipping 
the  Papal  claws  is  clear,  but  the  further  objects  of 
the  English  Reformers  and  the  desires  of  the  English 
people  are  by  no  means  clear.  It  was  a  kind  of 
intellectual  turmoil ;  ideas  and  customs  were  thrown 


THE  REFORMATION  213 

into  the  melting-pot,  and  either  the  nation  swung 
round  from  Catholicism  to  Calvinism,  from  Calvinism 
to  Romanism,  from  Romanism  to  Anglicanism, 
coming  to  some  harbourage  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  or  this  vacillation  is  only  true  of  a  few 
prominent  men,  the  bulk  of  the  nation  all  the  time 
remaining  indifferent.  Whatever  was  the  process,  the 
result  seems  to  have  been  that  the  people  of  England 
further  lost  hold  of  organised  religion,  although  it  is 
not  until  the  industrial  revolution  in  the  eighteenth 
century  that  the  Church  almost  entirely  loses  its 
influence  upon  the  people.  Protestant  historians 
have  attempted  to  minimise  the  importance  of  the 
pilgrimages  of  grace ;  these  risings  of  the  people, 
however,  were  a  formidable  protest  against  the 
Protestant  changes.  They  would  have  been  more 
formidable  if  the  corruptions  of  the  Church,  the 
scandals  of  indulgences,  the  money-grubbing  of  the 
higher  clergy  and  the  Papal  court  had  not  sickened 
and  wearied  the  ordinary  man.  He  was  genuinely 
shocked  at  the  divorce,  in  spite  of  the  King's  popu- 
larity, but  could  not  regard  the  curtailment  of  the 
later  Canon  law  with  anything  but  satisfaction. 

The  Church  of  England,  that  is,  the  christened 
people  of  England,  were  listless  and  disheartened. 
Some  time  before  the  Reformation  the  pillaging  of 
their  parochial  property  had  been  begun  by  the 
monasteries  :  the  worst  was  still  to  come.  It  has  been 
stated  that  pauperism  came  in,  not  by  the  suppression 
of  the  monasteries,  but  by  the  disendowment  of  the 
parishes.  If  the  robbery  of  the  monasteries  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  VIII.  was  disastrous,  the  robbery  of 


2i4      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  Catholic  poor  in  the  reign  of  Edward  VI.  was  an 
infinitely  greater  disaster.  For  about  six  years  the 
great  pillage  raged. 

"The  property  of  one  kind  or  another  owned  by 
the  parish  communities  throughout  England  in  the 
first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century  must  have  amounted 
to  an  aggregate  which  represented  millions  of  money." 
In  the  reign  of  King  Henry  VIII.  the  property 
of  monasteries,  chantries,  and  hospitals  was  annexed. 
There  followed  the  spoliation  of  gilds,  chapels  of  ease, 
colleges,  and  more  hospitals.  And  now  in  Edward 
VI.'s  reign  "the  plunder  of  the  poor  by  the  rich"1 
increased  in  volume.  Religion  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  business ;  "  the  richer  classes  went  raving 
mad  with  the  lust  of  gain." l  The  Protestant  super- 
stition that  would  do  away  with  sensuous  worship 
because  it  cast  the  body  and  its  sensuous  needs 
outside  the  realm  of  religion  provided  a  cloak  for 
plunderers,  who  passed  an  Act  that  the  missals, 
images,  pictures,  etc.,  should  be  destroyed  or  de- 
faced. But  the  scramble  had  already  begun.  "  In 
three  years  it  may  be  said  that  almost  all  the  parish 
churches  in  England  had  been  looted,  and  before  the 
end  of  the  king's  reign  there  had  been  a  clean  sweep 
of  all  that  was  worth  stealing  from  the  parish  chests, 
or  the  church  walls,  or  the  church  treasuries."  In  the 
next  generation  there  were  churches  by  the  score 
that  possessed  not  even  a  chalice  or  a  surplice. 
Our  parishes  were  ruined.  In  the  homilies  of  1 562, 
the  homilist  exclaims :  "  It  is  a  sin  and  shame  to 
see  so  many  churches  so  ruinous  and  so  foully  de- 

Cf.  Jessopp,  Before  the  Great  Pillage. 


THE  REFORMATION  215 

cayed,  .  .  .  defiled  with  rain  and  weather,  with  dung 
of  doves  and  owls."  Thus  was  accomplished  "the 
disendowment  of  all  the  parishes  of  England."1  It 
was  not,  in  Dr  Jessopp's  opinion,  the  suppression  of 
the  monasteries  but  the  disendowment  of  the  parishes 
that  created  pauperism.  Compare  the  churchwardens' 
accounts  of  any  county  parish  in  the  fifteenth  century 
with  those  of  the  same  parish  in  the  seventeenth  or 
eighteenth,  and  what  a  change  has  come  over  the 
scene  !  Where  there  was  at  one  time  interest  and 
vitality,  there  reigns  squalor  and  meanness  in  the 
assemblies,  now  shrivelled  to  three  or  four  parishioners. 
Then  came  the  conscientious  objectors  and  the  abol- 
ition of  the  church  rate,  followed  by  the  last  scene  of  all, 
in  which  the  Local  Government  Act  of  1894  describes 
the  once  glorious  parish  commune  as  "a  place  for 
which  a  separate  overseer  is  or  can  be  appointed." 

It  is  amusing  to  listen  to  some  descendant  of  the 
Cecils,  Russells,  Cavendishes,  Seymours,  Dudleys, 
FitzWilliams  or  the  like,  denouncing  as  robbers 
those  who  would  restore  the  land  and  treasures  of 
the  people  to  their  rightful  owners.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  underlying  motives  of  the  Reformers, 
the  motives  of  these  gentry  were  quite  evident. 
Even  the  anti-Catholic  sceptic  David  Hume  is  obliged 
to  admit  that  the  suppression  of  the  monasteries  was 
very  much  regretted  by  the  people,  for  the  monks 
had  not  equal  motives  to  avarice  with  other  men; 
they  were  most  indulgent  landlords  and  residents  on 
the  soil ;  when  their  lands  were  annexed,  the  rents 
were  at  once  raised  by  rapacious  stewards  and  spent 

1  Cf.  Jessopp,  Before  the  Great  Pillage. 


216      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

by  the  lords  elsewhere,  farmers  were  expelled, 
cottagers  robbed  of  their  commons,  and  whole  estates 
laid  waste;  there  was  a  great  decay  of  the  people 
and  a  diminution  of  the  former  plenty. 

The  building  up  of  modern  landed  estates  and  the 
formation  of  new  nobilities  from  the  spoils  of  the 
Church  and  the  poor,  mark  each  of  the  four  great 
epochs  in  the  life  of  the  Church  of  England.  First 
there  was  the  dissolution  of  monasteries  in  the  reign 
of  Henry  VIII.;  secondly,  spoliation  of  the  Catholic 
poor  in  the  reigns  of  Edward  VI.  and  Elizabeth ; 
thirdly,  the  abolition  of  the  national  episcopate  and 
the  expulsion  of  those  clergy  who  remained  true  to 
Catholic  tradition  by  the  Puritan  Parliament  during 
the  Civil  War;  fourthly,  the  imposition  upon  the 
people  of  the  so-called  Commonwealth  by  a  military 
oligarchy  of  Dissenters  in  1649.  Each  of  these 
periods  is  marked  by  the  "  estating "  of  a  greedy 
nobility,  old  and  new,  at  the  expense  of  the  Church 
and  its  christened  people.1 

Amid  the  rival  theories  and  controversies  of 
Catholic  and  Protestant  historians  on  the  Reforma- 
tion period,  one  or  two  things  stand  out  clearly.  The 
English  Reformers  did  not  wish  to  build  a  new  Church, 
but  to  reform  an  old  ;  they  did  not  wish  to  create  a 
schism,  they  had  no  intention  of  breaking  with 
Catholic  tradition.  The  Anglo-Catholic  theologians 
maintain  that  it  was  the  later  mediaeval  Church  that 
had  broken  with  its  Catholic  past.  Jewel  and  the 
English  apologists  repudiate  the  imperialism  of  the 

1  Cf.  Thomas  Hancock,  Pulpit  and  Press,   "Clergy  of  the  Church 
of  England  on  Landlordism. " 


THE  REFORMATION  217 

Roman  claim  ;  the  Catholic  idea  had  been  the  demo- 
cratic idea  of  the  General  Council,  the  Pope  claims 
to  dispense  with  councils.  Gradually  there  had  been 
growing  up  in  Europe,  under  the  aegis  and  protec- 
tion of  the  Church,  independent  nationalities.  The 
English  nation  had  no  desire  to  break  the  union  of 
Christendom ;  it  was  the  Papal  autocracy  and  its 
preposterous  claims  that  would  break  Europe  in 
pieces.  The  English  bishops  have  been  accused  of 
Protestant  insularity  and  independence.  They 
wished  the  Catholic  Church  to  be  independent  of 
autocracy.  For  the  rest,  they  were  not  insular  or 
independent,  for  they  appealed  to  ancient  tradition 
and  to  the  decision  of  an  international  Catholic 
council.  Interdependence,  the  old  Catholic  ideal, 
was  theirs.  If  they  were  driven  in  upon  themselves, 
and  if  the  Church  of  England  became  isolated  and 
self-sufficient,  it  was  because  the  only  international 
unity  possible  in  those  days  was  despotic  uniformity. 
We  have  seen  that  the  Church  of  Rome  and  the 
individualist  Protestant  Churches  were  repudiating 
Catholic  ideals.  The  Church  of  England  boldly 
appealed  to  those  ideals.  The  despotism  of  Rome 
should  no  longer  crush  ancient  tradition  or  the 
liberties  of  English  people;  neither  would  the  Church 
submit  to  the  despotism  of  the  written  word  as 
interpreted  by  the  Protestant  sectaries.  Its  watch- 
word was  not  the  Bible  only,  but  the  Bible  as  inter- 
preted by  the  living  traditions  of  the  Church.  Its 
liturgy,  largely  adapted  from  ancient  sources,  its 
calendar  of  saints  and  fathers,  its  insistence  upon 
sacraments  are  signs  of  its  Catholicism. 


2i8      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

So  absolutely  is  it  true  that  one  cannot,  if  one  will, 
divorce  a  good  or  bad  theology  from  its  economic 
expression,  that,  just  as  Protestantism  and  Papalism 
have  been  seen  to  have  had  individualistic  expres- 
sion, so  the  reformed  Catholicism  of  the  Church  of 
England  at  once  expresses  itself  in  protest  against 
the  robberies  of  the  aristocracy  and  plutocracy. 
Even  Cranmer,  most  vacillating  of  reformers,  is 
courageous  in  his  opposition  to  landlords  and 
merchants  of  Kent  in  their  attempt  to  rob  the  poor  of 
their  common  schools.  Thomas  Lever  preaches  over 
and  over  again  against  the  robbery  of  the  people's 
land  as  the  greatest  grief  that  had  been  done  unto 
the  people  of  this  realm.  In  a  sermon  before  the 
king  he  denounces  the  "covetous  landlords"  who, 
"  taking  the  ground  in  their  own  hands,  turn  all  to 
pasture." 

Another  Anglican  theologian  addressed  to  Parlia- 
ment in  1551  "an  information  and  petition  against 
the  oppressors  of  the  poor  commons  of  this  realm." 
"  Now  I  will  speak,"  says  he,  "  of  the  great  and  in- 
tolerable usury  which  at  this  day  reigneth  so  freely 
this  realm  over  all  and  chiefly  in  the  city  of  London, 
that  it  is  taken  for  most  lawful  gains.  Yea,  it  is  well 
most  heresy  to  reprove  it,  for  men  say  it  is  allowed 
by  Parliament.  Well,  the  most  part  I  am  sure  of  the 
godly  assemble  and  Parliament  do  know  that  the 
occasion  of  the  Act  that  passed  here  concerning 
usury  was  the  unsatiable  desire  of  the  usurers,  who 
could  not  be  contented  with  usury  unless  it  were 
unreasonable  much.  To  restrain  this  greedy  desire 
of  theirs  therefore,  it  was  communed  and  agreed  upon 


THE  REFORMATION  219 

and  by  authority  of  Parliament  agreed  that  none 
should  take  above  ten  pounds  by  year  for  the  loan 
of  one  hundred  pounds.  Alas  that  any  Christian 
assemble  should  be  so  void  of  God's  Holy  Spirit  that 
they  should  allow  for  lawful  anything  that  God's  Word 
forbiddeth.  Be  not  abashed  (most  worthy  councillors) 
to  call  this  Act  in  question  again." l  He  denounces 
those  who  would  gloss  over  the  plain  commands  of 
Scripture  and  pretend  that  the  taking  of  interest  was 
the  counsel  of  the  Saviour.  An  apologist  for  usury 
is  no  less  than  "  a  membre  of  the  devil  and  a  very 
anti-Christ."  The  Church  protest  was  so  strong  that 
for  the  time  it  carried  the  legislature  before  it,  and  the 
statute  of  Henry  VIII.  was  repealed  in  1552  under 
Edward  VI.,  and  the  preamble  to  the  repeal  admits 
that  "  usury  is  by  the  Word  of  God  utterly  prohibited." 
In  later  times  the  comprehensive  policy  adopted  by 
the  Elizabethan  government  may  be  shown  to  have 
hindered  the  formation  of  a  strong  and  persistent 
tradition  in  this  matter,  but  during  the  reigns  of 
Edward  VI.,  of  Elizabeth,  James  L,  and  Charles  I. 
ceaseless  protest  was  made  by  bishops  and  priests  of 
the  English  Church  against  the  robbery  of  the  poor 
by  the  nobles  and  gentry.  No  wonder  that  these 
aristocrats  espoused  the  cause  of  a  more  tolerant 
Puritanism.  There  is  a  discourse  upon  usury  in 
dialogue  form  by  Thomas  Wilson,  Doctor  of  the  Civil 
Laws,  one  of  the  Masters  of  Her  Majesty's  honourable 
Court  of  Requests,  probably  written  some  little  time 
before  the  Act  of  1571.  It  was  printed  in  1572,  and 
went  through  several  editions.  In  this  dialogue  he 

1  Quoted  by  Ashley,  EC.  Hist.,  vol.  i.  p.  465. 


220      SOCIALISM  IN   CHURCH  HISTORY 

refuses  to  draw  any  distinction  between  lending  to 
the  well-to-do  and  to  the  needy ;  he  utterly  condemns 
the  now  prevailing  distinction  between  biting  and 
fair  usury.  The  imaginary  opponent  is  made  to 
appeal  to  Molinaeus  and  the  Calvinist  divines,  the 
best  of  the  age,  as  Bucer,  Brentius,  Calvin,  and  Beza," l 
that  is,  to  Papist  and  Protestant  as  against  Anglo- 
Catholics  in  this  matter  ;  but  the  dialogue  closes  with 
his  conversion. 

Bishop  Jewel  thunders  against  usurious  practices, 
saying:— 

If  I  lend  ;£ioo  and  for  it  covenant  to  receive  .£105, 
or  any  other  sum  greater  than  was  the  sum  I  did 
lend,  this  is  that,  that  we  call  usury;  such  a  kind  of 
bargaining  as  no  good  man  or  godly  man  ever  used ;  such  a 
kind  of  bargaining  as  all  men  that  ever  feared  God's  judg- 
ment, have  always  abhorred  and  condemned.  ...  It  is  the 
overthrow  of  mighty  kingdoms,  the  destruction  of  flourishing 
states ;  the  decay  of  great  cities ;  the  plagues  of  the  world 
and  the  misery  of  the  people.  It  is  theft,  it  is  the  murdering 
of  our  brethren,  it  is  the  curse  of  God,  and  the  curse  of  the 
people.  This  is  usury,  and  by  these  signs  and  tokens  ye 
shall  know  it. 

Mr  Rose  also  quotes  Bishop  Sandys  as  follows : —  2 

By  what  means  soever  thou  receivest  more  than  was 
lent,  thou  art  a  usurer  towards  thy  brother,  and  God  will  be 
a  revenger  against  thee ;  ...  all  reason  and  the  very  law 
of  nature  are  against  it ;  all  nations  at  all  times  have  been 
against  it  as  the  very  bane  and  pestilence  of  a  common- 
wealth. 

Bishop  Hooper  says  :  "  As  for  usury,  it  is  none  other 
than  theft." 

Bishop  Pilkington  says  : — 

1  Ashley.  2  Churches  and  Usury,  by  H.  S.  Rose,  p.  36. 


THE  REFORMATION  221 

The  usurer  speaketh  courteously  and  dealeth  cruelly; 
he  defendeth  his  doing  to  be  charitable  when  he  eateth  up 
lands  and  goods,  turneth  infants  abegging,  and  overturneth 
the  whole  kindred. 

Mr  Rose  concludes  that  there  "  is  not  the  least 
reason  to  suppose  that  these  doctrines  were  not 
representative  of  the  views  then  held  ...  by  the 
fathers  of  the  Anglican  Church." 

Jewel  had  been  under  no  illusion  as  to  the  source 
of  interest.  To  the  argument  that  a  capitalist  lends 
money  on  usury  to  a  merchant,  and  that  the  merchant 
is  able  to  pay  him  out  of  his  gains,  he  replies : l  "  Who 
then  payeth  the  £10?  .  .  .  The  poor  people  that  buy 
the  corn.  They  feel  it  in  every  morsel  they  eat."  The 
only  investment  and  interest  he  allows  is  an  invest- 
ment by  those  incapable  of  work,  orphans,  madmen, 
diseased  merchants ;  and  even  in  this  case  there 
must  be  real  risk. 

So  much  for  capitalism.  We  have  seen  how  the 
revolution  in  agriculture,  which  was  turning  arable 
land  into  sheep-walks,  and  the  despoiling  of  the  lands 
of  the  Church  and  the  Catholic  parishes  was  bringing 
a  greater  misery  upon  the  poor  man  than  had  ever 
been.  Bishop  Latimer,  described  by  a  modern  writer 
as  "  the  darling  of  the  London  poor,"  preaching  before 
the  king,  arraigns  the  nobles  and  court  gentry  in  the 
following  words:  "You  landlords,  you  rent  raisers 
I  may  say  you  step  lords,  you  unnatural  lords,  you 
have  for  your  possessions  yearly  too  much  !  "  Him- 
self the  son  of  a  small  yeoman,  he  had  witnessed  the 
decay  of  English  agriculture  and  the  expulsion  of 

1  Jewel's  Works,  Parker  Society,  vol.  ii. 


222      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  poor  from  their  holdings  and  the  rack-renting  of 
farms.  "  Whereas  there  have  been  a  great  many 
householders  and  inhabitants,  there  is  now  but  a 
shepherd  and  his  dog."  "  All  such  proceedings  do 
intend  plainly  to  make  the  yeomanry  slaves."  "  He 
that  now  hath  my  father's  farm  payeth  £16  a  year 
(four  times  the  former  rent),  and  is  not  able  to  do 
anything  for  his  prince,  for  himself,  nor  for  his 
children,  nor  to  give  a  cup  of  drink  to  the  poor." 
"  The  commons  be  utterly  undone,  whose  bitter  cry 
ascendeth  up  to  the  ears  of  the  God  of  sabaoth." 

Latimer,  for  all  his  Protestantism  against  Rome 
and  against  candles  and  images,  is  a  strong  anti- 
Calvinist.  God  has  come  to  save  all  mankind. 
11  Christ  shed  as  much  blood  for  Judas  as  He  did  for 
Peter."  The  works  he  objected  to,  the  works  without 
faith  that  could  never  save  a  man,  are  the  adorning 
of  churches,  the  going  on  pilgrimages,  the  decoration 
of  images  which  some  men  substitute  for  the  works 
of  mercy. 

The  images  are  to  be  clad  in  silk  garments  and  those 
also  laden  with  precious  gems  and  jewels,  as  who  should 
say  that  no  cost  could  be  too  great ;  whereas  in  the  mean- 
time we  see  Christ's  faithful  and  lively  images,  bought  with 
no  less  price  than  His  most  precious  blood  (alas,  alas), 
a-hungered,  a-thirst,  a-cold,  and  to  be  in  darkness,  wrapped 
in  all  wretchedness,  yea,  to  lie  there  till  death  take  away 
their  miseries.1 

Later,  we  find  Francis  Trigg,  an  Elizabethan  divine, 
preaching  in  1592  at  Grantham :  "All  towns  are 
undone.  Their  common  things  and  lands  are  taken 

1  Quoted  by  Bishop  Gore,  Latimer  as  Christian  Socialist  (C.S.  U.). 


THE  REFORMATION  223 

from  them  ;  ...  so  now,  where  Christ's  family  have 
been  maintained,  grow  trees  or  nettles." 

Hutchinson,  an  earlier  theologian,  had  told  the 
same  tale.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  bitterness  of  its 
repetition  in  1609  by  William  Symons,  of  St  Saviour's, 
Southwark.  Three  years  later,  Thomas  Adams,  not 
yet  expelled  by  the  Puritan  Long  Parliament  from 
his  cure  of  St  Bennet's,  Paul's  Wharf,  preached  in 
St  Paul's  Cathedral,  in  the  reign  of  James  I.,  against 
the  landlords  and  their  thieveries,  and  speaks  of  the 
"  poor's  blood  which  they  have  sucked."  These  men 
must  restore  the  stolen  lands  to  the  towns,  the  churches, 
and  the  poor.  Preaching  in  his  own  church  in  1616, 
he  likens  the  depopulator  to  the  wild  boar  that  will 
forage  and  lay  waste  all  if  he  be  not  restrained. 
"Yea,  he  lays  waste  the  commonwealth  though  he 
encloseth  to  himself.  He  wasteth  societies,  com- 
munities, neighbourhood  of  people  ;  he  turneth  them 
out  of  their  ancient  doors  and  sends  them  into  the 
wide  world  to  beg  their  bread."  He  concludes  that 
this  kind  of  beast  should  be  hunted  down. 

But  as  early  as  1586  the  Protestant  individualist 
leaven  was  at  work.  The  Province  of  Canterbury  in 
that  year  ordered  the  younger  clergy  to  obtain  a 
copy  of  Bullinger's  decades,  and  make  an  abstract  of 
one  sermon  every  week.  Now,  this  Continental  Re- 
former was  a  good  anti-Catholic,  for  he  held  that 
certain  forms  of  interest  were  not  in  themselves 
unlawful,  nor  yet  condemned  in  the  Holy  Scriptures. 
Only  biting  usury  is  there  condemned.  Calvinism 
was  making  headway  within  the  national  Church, 
and  became  in  this  country  an  absolute  Puritanism, 


224      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

developing  its  original  doctrines  in  a  more  inhuman 
direction  than  had  been  the  case  in  Germany.  For 
instance,  Calvin  himself  had  been  as  free  from 
Sabbatarian  views  as  Luther,  who  boldly  pronounced 
that  if  anyone  wished  to  curtail  a  Christian  man's 
liberty  in  the  matter  of  the  Sunday,  then  he  would 
order  them  to  dance  on  it,  sing  on  it,  ride  on  it,  feast 
on  it,  to  do  anything  to  maintain  the  ancient  liberty. 
This  Puritanism  was  eagerly  espoused  by  the  land- 
stealing  class,  who  urged  on  the  Nonconformist 
against  the  bishops.  The  plutocrats  often  kept  Non- 
conformist chaplains  in  their  houses,  compelling  their 
tenants  to  attend  their  meetings  and  abstain  from 
communion  with  the  mixed  assembly  in  their  parish 
churches.  These  rich  men  were  always  preaching  the 
benefits  of  holy  poverty  to  the  clergy.  Archbishop 
Bancroft  explains  this  to  the  people  at  Paul's  Cross : 
"  They  do  greatly  urge  upon  the  ministry  the  apostolic 
poverty  to  the  intent  that  they  may  obtain  the  prey." 
"  I  doubt  not  it  is  manifest  to  you  that  covetousness 
hath  thrust  them  into  this  schism."  The  monks  at 
their  worst  had  been  better  than  their  plutocratic 
successors.  So  says  Prebendary  Thomas  Lever  at 
Paul's  Cross,  and  tells  the  people  they  are  stark  blind 
not  to  see  it.  Lever  tells  the  king  and  the  court 
that  the  miseries  of  the  people  are  due  to  the  rob- 
beries of  the  nobles,  who  have  turned  them  from  their 
holdings ;  "  so  now  old  fathers,  poor  widows,  and 
young  lie  begging  in  the  mirey  streets." 

For  the  time,  the  rising  tide  of  Puritanism  is 
stemmed  by  William  Laud,  the  martyr  archbishop, 
who  in  season  and  out  of  season  preached  the  doctrine 


THE  REFORMATION  225 

of  equality  before  the  law,  against  the  Puritan  theory 
of  immunity  in  the  case  of  courtiers  and  gentlemen. 
Heylin  seems  to  have  thought  his  life  might  have 
been  spared,  if  he  had  only  been  as  willing  as  were 
the  Nonconformists  that  the  rich  should  fill  themselves 
with  good  things,  while  the  poor  were  sent  empty 
away.  The  Puritan  lecturers  and  private  chaplains 
of  the  plutocrat  twitted  the  archbishop  with  the 
meanness  of  his  birth.  The  Puritan  Baxter  sneers 
at  Laud  and  his  suffragans  as  upstarts  who  had 
sprung  from  the  dregs  of  the  people.  These  up- 
starts enraged  the  landlords  by  administering  to  the 
churchwardens  of  every  parish  in  their  dioceses  the 
following  oath :  "  Swear  that,  all  affection,  favour, 
hatred,  hope  of  reward,  gain,  displeasure  of  great 
men,  malice,  or  other  sinister  respect  set  aside,  you 
shall  deal  uprightly,  truly,  and  justly,  presenting  all 
the  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  without  partiality, 
having  God  before  your  eyes."  "  Hath  any  neigh- 
bouring great  man  encroached  upon  any  part  of  the 
churchyard,  enclosing  it  to  his  garden,  etc.  ?  Present 
him  or  them  so  transgressing."  "  Is  any  maintenance 
given  to  free  and  public  schools  detained  or  inverted  ? 
By  whom  is  it  practised  ?  "  No  wonder  the  Puritans 
complained  :  "  Many  nobles  and  worthy  gentlemen  are 
curbed  and  tyrannised  over  by  some  base  clergyman 
of  mean  parentage."  The  archbishop  compelled  the 
worthy  gentlemen  to  disgorge  part  of  the  plunder. 
We  have  heard  of  the  tyrannies  of  the  High  Com- 
mission Court.  He  had  powerful  landlords  brought 
into  that  court  for  seizing  almshouses,  common  lands, 
the  endowments  of  free  schools,  portions  of  the 

15 


226      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

common  churchyards,  and  for  "walling  up  the  ancient 
ways."  His  enemy  Fiennes  charged  him  with  being 
the  foe  of  "  property  and  Puritanism."  Laud  stood 
for  the  people  of  England.  Cromwell  stood  for  the 
people  of  God  in  England.  "  Nothing  angered  Laud 
so  much  as  the  claim  of  a  great  man  to  escape  a 
penalty  which  would  fall  upon  others.  Nothing 
brought  him  into  such  disfavour  with  the  great  as 
his  refusal  to  admit  that  the  punishment  which  had 
raised  no  outcry,  when  it  was  meted  out  to  the  weak 
and  helpless,  should  be  spared  in  the  case  of  the 
powerful  and  wealthy  offender."1 

When  the  people  of  Lancashire  complained  to  the 
king  that  the  Nonconformists  were  laying  upon 
their  shoulders  burdens  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  to 
curtailing  their  ancient  right  of  enjoyment  on  Sundays 
and  holy  days,  it  was  by  Archbishop  Laud's  orders 
that  the  English  clergy  were  compelled  to  read  that 
most  Christian  of  documents  from  every  pulpit,  which 
proclaimed  to  the  people  their  liberty  of  games  and 
dancing  on  what  the  old  Christian  Fathers  called  the 
Day  of  the  Sun.  The  title  Nonconformist  is  here 
used  in  its  historic  sense  as  meaning  one  who  remains 
in  the  Church  of  England  while  refusing  to  conform 
to  the  Catholic  faith.  The  action  the  archbishop 
took  in  the  matter  seems  to  infuriate  our  Protestant 
historians  almost  as  much  as  his  opposition  to 
plutocracy.  They  leave  no  stone  unturned  to  blacken 
his  character  and  to  describe  as  martyrs  the  favourite 
preachers  of  the  plutocrats,  who  were  using  the  pulpits 
of  the  Christian  Church  to  disseminate  their  anti- 

1  Gardiner. 


THE  REFORMATION  227 

Christian  theories  of  the  Sabbath  and  of  private 
property.  These  champions  of  liberty,  expelled  from 
their  cures  for  refusal  to  conform  to  the  Christian 
doctrine,  carry  with  them  their  gospel  of  freedom 
beyond  the  seas,  and  establish  free  Protestant  States 
in  whose  constitution  the  private  property  rights  of 
rich  men  are  fully  acknowledged,  and  their  right  in 
slaves  is  proclaimed  to  be  a  precept  of  the  Gospel. 

When  the  Puritan  Party  gets  the  upper  hand  in 
England,  it  demonstrates  its  love  of  liberty  by  boring 
the  saintly  John  Naylor's  tongue  through  with  a  red- 
hot  iron,  for  daring  to  be  a  Quaker;  abolishes  the 
festivals  of  the  English  people,  Christmas,  Easter,  and 
the  like ;  makes  Sunday  recreation  penal,  and  generally 
establishes  that  type  of  religion  which  has  led  a 
revolted  country  into  something  not  very  far  from 
atheism.  Meanwhile  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  in  their 
newly  formed  colonies  were  passing  laws  which 
punished  with  flogging  any  man  who  should  kiss  his 
wife  on  Sunday,  and  which  reserved  the  death-penalty 
for  those  who  walked  too  far  or  played  games  on  a 
Sunday  afternoon.  Thus  was  liberty  of  the  Protestant 
kind  fully  established  in  this  country  and  beyond  the 
seas.  The  Puritan  lords  had,  as  Clarendon  says,  never 
forgotten  "  the  shames  which  they  called  an  insolent 
triumph  upon  their  degree  and  quality  and  a  levelling 
them  with  the  common  people." 

Here  is  a  newspaper  report  of  the  martyrdom  of 
Laud,  published  a  few  days  after  the  execution : — 

The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  was  this  day  beheaded 
on  Tower  Hill.  The  man  did  stand  much  upon  his 
integrity,  and  at  his  death  did  justify  his  innocence, 


228      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

expecting  I  believe  some  honour  to  be  done  unto  him  in 
another  age  in  whose  almanacks  he  would  shine  in  rubric 
and  be  canonised  for  some  saint  or  be  crowned  for  a  martyr. 

The  tendency  of  that  Puritan  age  was  to  substitute 
sermons  for  the  Catechism.  There  was  no  document 
in  the  Church  of  England  that  the  innovators  hated 
half  so  much,  for  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
Protestant  Catechisms  start  with  the  assumption  that 
only  an  elect  few  can  be  saved  out  of  the  vileness  of 
common  life,  while  the  English  Catechism  starts  with 
the  assumption  that  all  christened  people  are  members 
of  the  one  body  in  Christ,  and  every  one  members  one 
of  another.  This  could  not  but  shock  the  Puritans,  who 
held  that  God  had  created  most  of  them  for  damna- 
tion. They  could  not  believe  that  God  had  cleansed 
the  common  folk  ;  therefore  they  fought  against  "  the 
common  creed,  the  common  law,  the  common  prayer, 
and  the  common  sacraments  of  Christianity."  All 
these  things  were  to  them  common  and  unclean. 

One  of  the  complaints  of  Laud's  adversary  Henry 
Burton  against  the  Common  Prayer  was,  "it  cut  short 
sermons."  The  worship  that  is  social  strikes  at  the  indi- 
vidualism of  the  man  in  the  pulpit;  it  is  an  apostolical 
reminder  to  him  not  to  think  of  himself  more  highly  than 
he  ought  to  think.  The  pulpit,  the  symbol  of  individual- 
ism, was  the  idol  which  they  set  up  in  place  of  the 
Eucharist,  the  symbol  of  social  unity  and  community,  It 
was  held  as  part  of  the  right  relation  of  Church  and  State 
both  amongst  the  Nonconformists  and  Separatists  that  the 
civil  magistrate  ought  to  compel  "the  mixed  multitude," 
as  they  called  the  one  body  in  Christ,  to  "hear"  their 
sermons  and  lectures.1 

It  has  lately  been   contended   by  certain    Roman 

1  Cf.  Thomas  Hancock,  "Archbishop  Laud"  (Pulpit  and  Press). 


THE  REFORMATION  229 

Catholic  writers  that  the  Papal  communion  is  always 
the  champion  of  the  poor  against  the  plutocrat. 
They  bring-,  as  evidence,  the  spoiling  of  the  Church 
of  England,  which  they  call  the  Church  of  Rome,  by 
Protestant  landlords  and  other  wealthy  men.  They 
contend  that  if  we  had  not  thrown  over  the  Papal 
dominion  these  griefs  would  never  have  come  upon 
us.  It  will  be  sufficient  answer  to  remind  ourselves 
that  in  Queen  Mary's  reign  the  Pope  made  advances 
to  England,  offering  to  receive  the  wealthy  thieves 
back  into  communion,  assuring  them  of  full  absolu- 
tion, and  that  they  would  not  be  expected  to  restore 
any  of  the  stolen  property. 

Since  the  days  of  the  Commonwealth,  Christ's 
poor  have  been  ground  between  the  upper  and 
nether  millstone  of  the  landed  aristocracy  and  the 
monied  plutocracy.  The  Restoration  under  Charles 
II.  calls  forth  no  such  sturdy  champions  as  Arch- 
bishop Laud,  and  not  long  after,  the  Puritanism 
which  had  triumphed  outside  the  Church  wins  a 
more  lasting  victory  by  capturing  its  pulpits  and  its 
wealthy  congregations. 


IX 

THE 
NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM 

Decreasing  faith  and  increasing  misery — Wealth  increasing  more  rapidly 
than  population — A  bastard  religion — Christo-capitalists  oppose 
the  Factory  Acts — The  condition  of  the  children  in  mills,  mines, 
and  fields — Cheaper  than  horses — The  chloroforming  of  the  poor — 
The  apostasy  of  Churchmen — The  Dorsetshire  labourers — A  base 
hymnology — The  work  of  Elizabeth  Fry — Revivalism — Shaftesbury, 
Maurice,  and  Kingsley — Maurice  and  the  Catholic  revival — Maurice 
on  baptism— 1848— "  Politics  for  the  people." 


IX 
THE    NIGHT   OF    CHRISTENDOM 

"  A  number  of  the  hireling  prophets,  whom  we  have  seen  both  Amos 
and  Hosea  attack,  gave  their  blessing  to  this  social  system,  which 
crushed  the  poor,  for  they  shared  its  profits.  They  lived  upon  the 
alms  of  the  rich,  and  flattered  according  as  they  fed.  .  .  .  The  false 
prophet  spoke,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  for  himself  and  his  living. 
He  sided  with  the  rich  ;  he  shut  his  eyes  to  the  social  condition  of  the 
people  ;  he  did  not  attack  the  sins  of  the  day.  This  made  him  false — 
robbed  him  of  insight  and  the  power  of  prediction.  But  the  true 
prophet  exposed  the  sins  of  his  people.  Ethical  insight  and  courage, 
burning  indignation  of  wrong,  clear  vision  of  the  facts  of  the  day — this 
was  what  Jehovah's  spirit  put  in  him,  this  was  what  Micah  felt  to  be 
inspiration. 

"  The  prophet  speaks  :— 

Thus  saith  Jehovah  against  the  prophets  who  lead  my  people 

astray, 

Who  while  they  have  ought  between  their  teeth  proclaim  peace, 
But  against  him  who  will  not  lay  to  their  mouths  they  sanctify 

war  ! 

Wherefore  night  shall  be  yours  without  vision, 
And  yours  shall  be  darkness  without  divination  ; 
And  the  sun  shall  go  down  on  the  prophets, 
And  the  day  shall  darken  about  them." 

GEORGE  ADAM  SMITH,  The  Twelve  Prophets,  chap.  xxvi. 

' '  The  condition  of  the  labourers  deteriorated  from  the  time  of 
Elizabeth  onwards,  but  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  it  had 
been  materially  improved  owing  to  the  increase  of  wealth  from  the  new 
agriculture  and  from  the  general  growth  of  foreign  trade.  But  then 
came  the  great  Continental  wars  and  the  industrial  revolution  ;  and  it  is 

"33 


234      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

a  sad  but  significant  fact  that  although  the  total  wealth  of  the  nation 
vastly  increased  at  the  end  of  last  century  and  the  beginning  of  this, 
none  of  that  wealth  came  into  the  hands  of  the  labourers,  but  went 
entirely  into  the  hands  of  great  landlords  and  new  capitalist  manu- 
facturers."— GIBBINS,  Industrial  History  of  England,  p.  186  (University 
Extension  edition). 

WITH  the  decline  of  the  Catholic  faith  the  "  Golden 
Age  of  the  labourer  "  passed  away.  There  has  been 
since  then  a  steady  deterioration  in  the  position  of 
the  working  classes,  with  the  exception  of  a  brief 
period  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The 
argument  that  abject  poverty  was  inevitable  was  met 
in  an  earlier  chapter  by  an  examination  of  a  hundred 
years  of  English  life  which  afforded  a  complete  denial 
to  this  statement.  People  who  use  this  argument  are 
apt  to  shift  their  ground  and  admit  that  there  really 
was  a  comparatively  golden  age  for  labour,  but  to 
account  for  it  by  pointing  to  the  smallness  of  the 
population  in  that  period.  The  industrial  revolution 
of  the  early  nineteenth  century  enormously  increased 
the  wealth  of  the  rich,  but  reduced  the  poor  at  the 
same  time  to  a  more  abject  slavery  than  they  had 
known  for  hundreds  of  years.  That  this  was  not 
accounted  for  by  the  increase  of  population  is  proved 
by  the  fact  that,  although  population  has  so  vastly 
increased  since  the  fourteenth  century,  the  output  of 
wealth  per  head  has  multiplied  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  increase  of  the  population. 

In  the  early  nineteenth  century  you  have  on  the 
one  hand  "the  idea  of  religion  as  a  little  private 
transaction  of  a  strictly  confidential  character  between 
a  man  and  '  his  God, ' "  *  and  on  the  other  hand  an 

1  Rashdall,  Doctrine  of  Development. 


THE  NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        235 

economic  state  of  affairs  among  the  working  classes 
which  historians  dealing  with  the  period  do  not 
hesitate  to  describe  as  slavery. 

Meanwhile,  what  had  become  of  God's  Catholic 
Church,  i.e.  of  the  christened  people  of  England  ? 
Puritan  individualism  had  scourged  them  along  the 
road  to  Calvary,  and  now  they  find  themselves  crucified 
between  two  thieves.  The  name  of  the  one  is  "  Next- 
worldliness,"  the  name  of  the  other  is  Capitalism. 
From  its  cross  democracy  cries,  "  I  thirst,"  but  the  chief 
priests  and  scribes  deride  Him,  saying : — 

Nothing  is  worth  a  thought  beneath 
But  how  I  may  escape  the  death 

That  never,  never  dies ; 
How  make  mine  own  election  sure, 
And  when  I  fail  on  earth  secure 

A  mansion  in  the  skies.1 

Adherents  of  this  bastard  Christianity  are  never 
tired  of  pointing  the  finger  of  scorn  at  socialism, 
calling  it  atheism.  None  of  the  younger  leaders  of 
the  socialist  movement  in  this  country  are  atheists. 
Many  of  the  earlier  leaders  turned  to  atheism  in 
protest  against  the  official  religion  of  their  day  and 
its  monstrous  consequences.  Official  Christianity 
had  brought  the  christened  poor  into  chronic  misery 
and  atheistic  despair.  Out  of  the  depths  the  demo- 
cracy cries :  "  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  Thou 
forsaken  me  ?  " 

These  capitalistic  Christians,  who  found  the  next 
world  so  useful  an  asset  in  their  war  against  God's 
poor,  chloroforming  them  into  submission  by  threats 

1  From  a  popular  hymn  of  this  period. 


236      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

of  hell  and  hopes  of  paradise,  did  not  really  think 
that  the  chief  end  of  life  was  the  mansion  in  the 
sky ;  unless,  indeed,  it  was  by  the  merest  accident 
that  they  had  secured  to  themselves  so  many  desir- 
able mansions  on  the  earth.  How  had  it  been  done  ? 
The  wages  of  the  fathers  had  been  reduced  to  starva- 
tion level,  so  that  the  mothers  were  forced  into  the 
mills,  the  children  sold  into  slavery.  In  1819  the 
condition  of  the  people  had  so  far  improved  that  the 
Christian  rich  could  no  longer  obtain  children  of 
under  nine  years  of  age  for  more  than  fourteen  hours' 
daily  labour  in  their  factories.  An  Act  of  Parlia- 
ment to  this  effect  was  violently  opposed  by  the 
majority  of  Christian  employers,  and  the  ruin  of  the 
country  was  as  usual  threatened.  Such  an  Act  was 
tyranny ;  it  threatened  freedom  of  contract ;  it  was 
robbing  the  rich  and  interfering  with  the  right  of 
the  poor  parent  to  do  what  he  liked  with  his  own, 
So  the  Christo-capitalist  weeklies  argued  then ;  so 
they  argue  now.  The  editor  of  the  Spectator  is  even 
now  put  up  at  Church  congresses  to  defend  those 
iniquitous  times.  He  is  proud  to  call  himself  the 
champion  of  the  Manchester  school,  a  school  of 
thinkers  who  opposed  the  Factory  Acts  as  being 
socialism  and  snivelling  sentimentality. 

Before  the  passing  of  those  Acts,  the  workhouses 
and  semi-starving  parents  supplied  child-stuff  for 
the  working  of  the  system.  The  pauper  children 
were  from  time  to  time  inspected  and  packed  into 
waggons  and  canal  boats  and  sent  to  the  mills. 
Child-traffickers  often  took  the  children  off  the 
guardians'  hands  and  kept  them  in  a  factory  dis- 


THE  NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        237 

trict  in  dark  cellars  until  the  mill-owners  could  send 
their  inspectors  to  examine  them  as  to  height  and 
strength  and  general  bodily  fitness.  They  then  be- 
came the  property  of  the  employer,  who  did  not 
trouble  to  feed  them  or  clothe  them  too  well,  for 
children  were  so  cheap  and  the  supply  almost 
unlimited. 

The  following  quotations  are  from  the  University 
Extension  edition  of  Gibbins's  Industrial  History  of 
England-. — 

The  hours  of  their  labour  were  only  limited  by  exhaus- 
tion, after  many  modes  of  torture  had  been  unavailingly 
applied  to  force  continued  work.  Children  were  often 
worked  sixteen  hours  a  day,  by  day  and  by  night.  Even 
Sunday  was  used  as  a  convenient  time  to  clean  the 
machinery. 

Their  life  was  literally  and  without  exaggeration  simply 
that  of  slaves. 

In  stench,  in  heated  rooms,  amid  the  constant  whirling 
of  a  thousand  wheels,  little  fingers  and  little  feet  were  kept 
in  ceaseless  action,  forced  into  unnatural  activity  by  blows 
from  the  heavy  hands  and  feet  of  the  merciless  over-looker, 
and  the  infliction  of  bodily  pain  by  instruments  of  punish- 
ment invented  by  the  sharpened  ingenuity  of  insatiable 
selfishness. * 

They  were  sometimes  literally  fed  with  food  that 
the  swine  did  eat.  They  slept  by  turns  and  in  re- 
lays in  beds  which  were  never  cool,  one  set  of 
children  being  sent  to  bed  as  soon  as  the  other  had 
gone  ofT.  The  sexes  were  not  always  discriminated, 
and  disease  and  vice  flourished.  When  the  children 
tried  to  run  away,  men  on  horseback  were  sent  after 
them  and  scourged  them  back  into  captivity.  Irons 
1  Page  179,  etc. 


238      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

were  then  riveted  to  their  ankles  to  prevent  escape. 
They  died  off  like  flies  in  summer,  and  were  buried 
secretly  at  dead  of  night  lest  the  number  of  the 
graves  should  startle  the  people.  What  is  true  of 
the  factories  is  also  true  of  the  fields.  Slave-gangs 
of  children  were  hired  out  to  the  farmers,  and 
brutally  ill-treated  and  overworked.  Child-slavery 
in  the  mines  was  even  worse,  Girls  and  women, 
as  well  as  boys,  were  used  as  beasts  of  burden  under- 
ground, dragging  loads  of  coal  in  places  where  no 
horses  could  go,  harnessed  and  crawling  along  the 
dark  passages. 

The  condition  of  the  children  reflects  the  condition 
of  the  general  mass  of  English  labour  in  the  early 
nineteenth  century.  Working  people  were  stabled 
worse  than  horses,  for  they  were  cheaper  than  horses. 
They  were  treated  worse  than  dogs,  for  they  were 
cheaper  than  dogs. 

The  profits  of  farmers,  landlords,  mine-owners,  and 
mill-owners  increased  at  an  almost  incredible  rate. 
Every  attempt — and  they  were  few  enough — on  the 
part  of  the  poor  to  shake  off  their  chains  was 
denounced  by  middle-class  official  Christianity  as 
atheism  and  treason.  For  the  most  part  the  people 
had  been  so  nearly  bled  to  death  by  underfeeding 
and  overworking,  and  so  thoroughly  stupefied  by  the 
religion  of  next-worldliness,  that  they  hearkened  not 
unto  Marx,  Owen,  and  Kingsley  for  anguish  of  spirit 
and  for  cruel  bondage.  To  the  christened  poor  of 
England  poverty  and  exploitation  seemed  "  as  inevit- 
able as  the  coming  of  death."  It  is  only  when  social 
reform  has  won  for  the  people  a  little  bread  and  a 


THE  NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        239 

little  breathing-space  that  they  revive  sufficiently  to 
begin  to  feel  their  wrongs.  Starved  and  sweated 
Haggerston  votes  Tory.  Colne  Valley  votes  for 
Revolution. 

Mr  George  Russell  has  collected  some  of  the 
results  of  the  Protestant  individualist  religion,  and 
they  form  an  interesting  commentary  on  the  condi- 
tion of  the  English  Church  in  the  early  nineteenth 
century.  In  1794  Sydney  Smith  became  curate  in 
charge  of  a  village  on  Salisbury  Plain ;  he  found 
the  church  empty  and  the  villagers  "aliment  for 
Newgate,  food  for  the  halter — a  ragged,  wretched, 
savage,  stubborn  race."  Five  years  later  he  wrote : 
"  In  England  (except  many  ladies  in  the  middle 
rank  of  life)  there  is  no  religion  at  all.  The  clergy 
of  England  have  no  more  influence  on  the  people  at 
large  than  the  cheesemongers  of  England."  William 
Wilberforce,  visiting  Brigg  in  1796,  found  no  service 
on  Sunday  morning,  and  all  the  people  lounging 
about  the  streets.  He  found  Stamford  in  1798  "a 
sad,  careless  place ;  .  .  .  a  shopkeeper  said  that  none 
of  the  clergy  were  active,  or  went  among  the  poor." 
Archdeacon  Daubeny,  vicar  of  North  Bradley,  just 
before  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  found  the 
people  so  barbarous  that  they  would  pull  down  the 
walls  of  the  Church  and  vicarage,  then  rebuilding, 
and  cut  and  destroy  the  trees.  In  1800  Bishop 
Horsley  said :  "  For  the  last  thirty  years  we  have 
seen  but  little  correspondence  between  the  lives  of 
men  and  their  profession ;  a  general  indifference 
about  the  doctrine  of  Christianity,  a  general  neglect 
of  its  duties."  About  the  same  time  the  Bishop  of 


24o      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

London  wrote  that  the  state  of  the  kingdom, 
political,  moral,  and  religious,  was  so  unfavourable 
as  to  excite  the  most  serious  alarm.  In  1805  the 
rector  of  Alderley,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Norwich, 
found  that  the  clerk  used  to  go  to  the  churchyard 
stile  to  see  whether  there  were  any  more  coming  to 
church,  for  there  were  seldom  enough  to  make  a 
congregation.  The  former  rector  used  to  boast  that 
he  had  never  set  foot  in  a  sick  person's  cottage. 
Mr  George  Russell  shows  that  the  official  Church 
had  forgotten  her  mission  to  the  poor  and  had  be- 
come the  ally  of  the  governing  classes.  So  bitterly 
were  the  clergy  opposed  to  anything  that  could  be 
called  socialism  that  the  country  parson  was  spoken 
of  as  the  black  recruiting  sergeant  of  the  rich. 
Mr  Russell  tells  us  that  at  that  time  the  parson  was 
described  as  "a  furious  political  demon,  rapacious, 
insolent,  luxurious,  having  no  fear  of  God  before  his 
eyes  "  ;  the  popular  cry  in  the  villages  was,  "  More  pigs 
and  less  parsons." 

The  bishops  in  the  House  of  Lords  incurred  an 
amount  of  hatred  which  only  a  perusal  of  their 
votes  can  explain. 

They  were  defenders  of  absolutism,  slavery,  and  the 
bloody  penal  code;  they  were  the  resolute  opponents  of 
every  political  or  social  reform ;  and  they  had  their  reward 
from  the  nation  outside  Parliament.  The  Bishop  of  Bristol 
had  his  palace  sacked  and  burnt;  the  Bishop  of  London 
could  not  keep  an  engagement  to  preach  lest  the  congrega- 
tion should  stone  him.  The  Bishop  of  Lichfield  barely 
escaped  with  his  life  after  preaching  at  St  Bride's,  Fleet 
Street.  Archbishop  Howley,  entering  Canterbury  for  his 
primary  visitation,  was  insulted,  spat  upon,  and  only  brought 
by  a  circuitous  route  to  the  Deanery,  amid  the  execrations 


THE  NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        241 

of  the  mob.  On  5th  November  the  Bishops  of  Exeter  and 
Winchester  were  burnt  in  effigy  close  to  their  own  palace 
gates.  Archbishop  Howley's  chaplain  complained  that  a 
dead  cat  had  been  thrown  at  him,  when  the  Archbishop — 
a  man  of  apostolic  meekness — replied  :  "  You  should  be 
thankful  that  it  was  not  a  live  one." 

In  1829  Samuel  Wilberforce,  afterwards  the  famous 
bishop,  wrote  to  a  friend  :  "  I  think  that  the  Church  will  fall 
within  fifty  years  entirely,  and  the  State  will  not  survive  it 
much  longer." 

The  Rev.  W.  Nassau  Molesworth  says  in  his  History  of 
England  from  the  Year  1830  that  he  could  himself  recall 
"the  fierce  shout  of  applause  which  rent  the  air  at  a  large 
public  meeting  in  Canterbury — when  one  of  the  speakers 
suggested  that  the  noble  cathedral  of  the  city  should  be 
converted  into  a  stable  for  the  horses  of  the  cavalry."  x 

Here  is  an  instance  of  the  procedure  of  Church  and 
State  about  this  period.  In  1832  six  agricultural 
labourers  in  South  Dorsetshire,  led  by  one  of  their 
class,  George  Loveless,  in  receipt  of  95.  a  week  each, 
demanded  the  ios.  rate  of  wages  usual  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. The  result  was  a  reduction  to  8s.  An 
appeal  was  made  to  the  chairman  of  the  local  bench, 
who  decided  that  they  must  work  for  whatever  their 
masters  chose  to  pay  them.  The  parson,  who  had  at 
first  promised  his  help,  now  turned  against  them,  and 
the  masters  promptly  reduced  the  wage  to  75.,  with  a 
threat  of  further  reduction.  Loveless  then  formed 
an  agricultural  union,  for  which  all  seven  of  them 
were  arrested,  treated  as  convicts,  and  committed  to 
the  assizes.  The  prison  chaplain  tried  to  bully  them 
into  submission.  The  judge  determined  to  convict 
them,  and  directed  that  they  should  be  tried  for  mutiny 
under  an  Act  of  George  III.  specially  passed  to  deal 

1  Right  Hon.  George  Russell,  The  Optimist,  p.  234,  1908. 

16 


242      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

with  the  naval  mutiny  at  the  Nore.  The  grand  jury 
were  landowners,  and  the  petty  jury  were  farmers  ; 
both  judge  and  jury  were  churchmen  of  the  prevailing 
type.  The  judge  summed  up  as  follows :  "  Not  for 
anything  that  you  have  done,  or  as  I  can  prove  that 
you  intend  to  do,  but  for  an  example  to  others  I 
consider  it  my  duty  to  pass  the  sentence  of  seven 
years'  penal  transportation  across  His  Majesty's  high 
seas  upon  each  and  every  one  of  you." 

The  sermons  of  that  time  were  very  models  of 
Christo-capitalism,  and  if  one  takes  the  trouble  to 
trace  the  more  particularly  individualistic  and  next- 
worldly  sentiments  in  our  hymn-books  back  to  their 
source,  their  origin  will  almost  always  be  found  in 
the  period  we  are  now  considering.  The  religion  of 
a  thousand  per  cent,  is  admirably  expressed  in  the 
following  verse : — 

Whatever,  Lord,  we  lend  to  Thee, 
Repaid  a  thousand-fold  will  be ; 
Then  gladly  will  we  give  to  Thee, 
Who  givest  all. 

The  spirit  of  the  nineteenth  century  breathes  in 
the  Protestant  addition  to  an  early  Greek  hymn, 
"  O  Paradise !  O  Paradise  !  "  :— 

O  Paradise  !  O  Paradise !  I  greatly  long  to  see 
The  special  place  my  dearest  Lord 
In  love  prepares  for  me. 

One  can  hardly  imagine  that  even  God  Himself 
could  forgive  young  people  in  robust  health  singing, 
"  'Tis  weary  waiting  here,"  unless  it  were  on  the  plea 
of  their  evident  insincerity.  We  believe  that  Christ 
was  the  revelation  of  the  character  of  God,  and  He 


THE  NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        243 

did  not  go  about  the  world  encouraging  young 
people  to  seek  an  early  grave,  nor  suggesting  that 
disease  and  premature  death  were  His  heavenly 
Father's  will.  He  had  come  that  they  might  have 
life,  and  He  restored  to  the  enfeebled  material  and 
mental  as  well  as  spiritual  vitality.  Protestant 
individualism  flung  back  the  gift  of  life  into  the  face 
of  the  Life-giver. 

To  about  the  same  period  belongs,  "  The  rich  man 
in  his  castle,  the  poor  man  at  his  gate."  It  must  not 
for  a  moment  be  thought  that  this  line  is  a  relic  of 
feudalism,  for  the  feudal  system,  whatever  its  faults, 
never  exalted  the  rich  man  or  his  estate  of  riches  as 
God  ordered.  It  had  its  Orders  of  society,  but  it 
was  left  to  Christo-capitalism  to  preach  the  Divine 
Right  of  vulgar  plutocrats. 

It  may  be  considered  fanciful  to  suggest  that  the 
slightest  tendency  towards  a  Catholic  democratic 
revival  would  find  its  expression  in  the  deletion  of 
these  capitalist  and  next-worldly  sentiments  from 
our  hymn-book,  and  in  a  pro-socialist  tendency  among 
the  clergy  and  people.  But  what  are  the  facts? 
The  English  Church  Hymnal  contains  none  of  these 
versions,  includes  retranslations  of  old  Catholic 
hymns,  reinserting  the  social  sentiments,  which  were 
carefully  omitted  in  nineteenth-century  hymn-books, 
and  includes  a  considerable  number  of  hymns  sung  at 
socialist  gatherings.  This  particular  hymn-book  is 
daily  gaining  in  popularity,  and  bids  fair  to  oust  all 
others  in  the  future.  The  new  Nonconformist 
"  Fellowship "  hymn-book  is  even  more  outspoken. 

Among  Nonconformist  bodies,  the  least  individual- 


244      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

istic  have  been  "the  Friends."  Their  belief  in  the 
Living  Spirit  has  to  a  large  extent  counteracted 
their  undervaluation  of  the  outward  and  material 
form,  and  the  Society  has  given  us  Elizabeth  Fry, 
a  great  pioneer  of  prison  reform,  and  other  social 
reformers. 

There  has  been  little  short  of  a  revolution  in 
the  thought  and  spirit  of  the  Church  of  England 
within  the  last  fifty  years.  Eighteenth-century  indi- 
vidualist Deism  left  the  nation  cold  and  indifferent. 
Evangelical  revivalism  for  the  most  part  attracted 
people  of  the  upper  and  middle  classes.  Even 
Wesleyanism,  tinged  at  first  with  Catholic  democratic 
sentiment,  and  therefore  with  some  slight  enthusiasm 
for  social  reform,  soon  became  frankly  individualistic, 
next-worldly,  and  middle-class.  Perhaps  revivalism 
of  any  sort,  however  perverted  its  theory  of  religion, 
was  preferable  to  the  deadness  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  for  it  meant  an  awakening  of  the  heart,  and 
men  once  awakened  sometimes  prove  better  than  their 
creed.  It  would  be  hard  to  imagine  a  narrower  faith 
than  that  of  Shaftesbury  ;  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a 
more  generous-hearted  man  than  this  great  Evangelical 
leader.  The  logic  of  his  creed  should  have  driven 
him  to  the  anti-socialism  of  Calvin  and  Charles 
Wesley,  but  his  heart  escaped  from  the  nets  of  his 
intellectual  creed  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the 
Gospel  of  Christ,  and  he  became  the  champion  of 
the  children  of  the  poor.  He  had  against  him  the 
dead-weight  of  a  huge  Christo-atheist  majority,  but 
his  indomitable  perseverance  spelt  ultimate  victory. 
But  it  is  to  Kingsley  and  Maurice,  rather  than  to 


THE   NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        245 

Shaftesbury,  that  we  must  look  for  the  rebirth  of 
that  Catholic  democratic  theology  which  inevitably 
translates  itself,  and  in  their  own  time  began  to 
translate  itself,  into  practical  socialism.  It  is  a 
significant  comment  on  contemporary  teaching  that 
Maurice  writes  of  himself,  referring  to  his  childhood, 
as  "  a  being  destined  to  a  few  short  years  of  misery 
here  as  an  earnest  of,  and  preparation  for,  that  more 

(enduring  state  of  wretchedness  and  woe."  Clumsy 
critics  will  always  describe  Maurice  and  Kingsley  as 
broad  Churchmen,  but  in  fact  they  protested  against 
broad  Churchism  as  being  almost  as  anti-Christian 
as  Puseyism  or  popular  Protestantism.  Their  lives 
were  devoted  to  the  revival  of  the  Catholic  democratic 
Faith.  Maurice  was  a  profoundly  original  Catholic 
theologian,  not  bound  by  the  letter  of  tradition,  but 
developing  its  spirit.  I  might  instance  his  teaching 
on  the  Eucharist,  on  the  sacrament  of  marriage,  on 
confession,  on  prayers  for  the  dead,  on  many  other 
points  of  faith  and  morals;  but  perhaps  his  exposition 
of  baptism  is  most  characteristic. 

Maurice  rejected  the  Protestant  theory  of  an  in- 
visible Church,  and  the  Romish  theory  of  a  vicarious 
Church,  in  favour  of  the  Catholic  theory  of  the  Church 
as  a  visible  society  ordained  by  Christ  to  bring  about 
the  Kingdom  of  God.  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  the 
world  of  men  and  women  as  planned  in  heaven,  in  the 
ideal  world  of  God's  mind,  will,  intention.  It  is  in 
the  truest  sense  the  actual  world,  because  it  is  the 
world  as  divinely  and  eternally  constituted  in  the  will 
of  God.  Over  against  it  are  the  temporary  "  kingdoms 
of  this  age" — i.e.  of  the  competitive  age  in  which  men 


246      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

are  at  sixes  and  sevens — which  the  Church  has  to 
translate  into  the  kingdom  of  unity  or  at-one-ment, 
into  the  Kingdoms  of  God  and  of  His  Christ,  into  the 
Kingdom  in  which  each,  by  serving  all,  best  serves  his 
eternal  self  and  grows  into  full,  eternal,  or  overmaster- 
ing life.  The  underlying  fact  is  the  kingdom  or 
solidarity  of  men,  the  fact  of  God's  Holy  Family. 
That  fact  is  so  blurred  by  egoism,  impurity,  and  other 
deadly  sins  and  deadly  ignorances,  that  men  arrange 
their  lives,  domestically,  politically,  commercially,  as 
if  the  fact  did  not  exist.  The  Church  is  a  body  of 
men  converted  to  the  fact  and  sworn  to  convert 
others  to  the  fact,  and  to  frame  the  social  life  upon 
the  fact. 

Broad  Churchmen  said  that  baptism  declared  the 
fact.  Maurice  added  that  it  not  only  declared  the 
fact,  but  helped  you  to  effect  it,  by  effecting  something 
for  you — i.e.  by  translating  you  out  of  the  false, 
unnatural  soil  of  barren  individualism  (your  birth  soil) 
into  the  richer,  more  natural  grace  soil  of  a  common 
fellowship,  a  "common  salvation,"  by  incorporating 
you  into  a  visible  fellowship  established  to  bring  into 
practice  and  actuality  the  latent  unrecognised  fact  of 
men  being  God's  family.  Such  a  transplantation 
constitutes  a  new  chance,  a  new  start,  a  new  birth, 
and  hence  is  most  accurately  called  Regeneration. 

By  this  regeneration  into  a  socialist  fellowship  the 
individual  may  lose  his  egoistic  soul  or  life  "  for  My 
sake  and  the  Gospel's,"  and  save  it  unto  life  eternal — 
i.e.  unto  full,  generous,  robust,  overmastering  life.  Of 
course  the  partial  apostasy  from  fellowship  of  the 
local  congregation,  into  which  the  child  is  immediately 


THE  NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        247 

received,  impoverishes  the  new  soil ;  but  so  long 
as  the  Church  has  the  fellowship  tradition,  social 
liturgy,  and  living  socialistic  sacraments,  the  part 
apostasy  of  the  local  congregation,  though  appalling, 
is  not  fatal,  nor  can  it  totally  destroy  the  effect 
of  baptism. 

Neither  Maurice  nor  Kingsley  were  economic 
socialists  in  our  modern  sense.  Maurice,  indeed, 
was  as  pro-monarchy  a  man  as  Ruskin,  but  modern 
socialism  owes  a  considerable  debt  to  both  these 
prophets  of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  speaks  of 
the  dense  commercial  strength  which  one  encounters 
even  in  religion  as  a  more  overpowering  nightmare 
upon  the  soul  than  any  bad  influence  ever  felt.  In 
1840  Lord  John  Russell  told  the  House  of  Commons 
that  the  people  of  England  were  in  a  worse  condition 
than  the  negroes  in  the  West  Indies.  By  some  curious 
twist  of  the  mind,  common  enough  in  the  history 
of  religion,  many  of  the  Christian  capitalists  were 
so  filled  with  indignation  against  black  slavery 
abroad  that  they  had  no  time  to  consider  the  white 
slavery  at  their  doors  which  was  securing  them  their 
enormous  fortunes.  The  state  of  society  in  England, 
wrote  Dr  Arnold  to  Carlyle,  was  never  yet  paralleled 
in  history.  Cobden,  champion  of  individualism  and 
opponent  of  Shaftesbury,  yet  inflamed  the  first 
agitation  of  the  anti-corn  law  league  with  story  after 
story  of  the  tragedy  of  rural  labourers;  women 
pawning  their  wedding  rings  to  buy  food,  people 
living  on  boiled  nettles  or  decayed  carcases  of  dead 
cattle. 

The  great  emigration  was  flinging  numbers  beyond 


248      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

the  sea,  inflamed  with  revolt  and  despair  and  bitter- 
ness against  their  own  land. 

In  want,  in  terror,  and  with  a  sense  of  the  crushing 
injustice  of  the  times,  they  cursed  the  land  in  which  they 
had  been  born.  .  .  .  The  Reform  Bill  had  disappointed 
them,  all  their  trade  conflicts  had  ended  in  failure.  Even 
the  resounding  attacks  against  the  Corn  Laws,  then  begin- 
ning to  fill  the  country,  excited  little  interest  among  the 
working  classes,  and  so  they  gave  little  response.  The 
betrayal  and  failure  had  made  them  sad  and  hopeless. 

In  1848  the  storm  burst.  The  long  period  of  European 
sleep  and  silence  suddenly  flared  into  resonant  action. 
Lamennais,  back  "  amongst  realities  once  again "  after  the 
experience  of  his  fortress-prison,  was  called  to  represent  the 
people  in  a  republican  assembly.  "  A  great  act  of  justice  is 
being  done,"  was  his  cry;  "cannot  you  feel  the  breath  of 
God?"  Mazzini,  after  years  of  obscure  poverty  in  the 
back  streets,  "the  hell  of  exile"  in  London,  was  soon  to 
find  himself  raising  the  red  banner  of  God  and  Humanity 
upon  the  wall  of  Rome.  Every  throne  in  Europe  tottered, 
and  most  were  thrown  to  the  ground.  The  barricades 
were  up  in  Berlin,  in  Milan,  in  Paris.  The  air  was  filled 
with  the  clamour  and  havoc  of  change.  The  revelation  of 
the  coming  of  terrors  seemed  at  last  realised  in  the  ways  of 
men;  with  the  sun  becoming  black  as  sackcloth  of  hair, 
and  the  moon  blood-red,  and  the  stars  of  heaven  falling  to 
the  earth,  as  a  fig-tree  when  she  is  shaken  by  a  mighty 
wind.1 

Maurice's  method  is  well  illustrated  in  his  applica- 
tion of  the  Bible,  and  especially  of  the  Revelation, 
to  the  interpretation  of  the  moment.  In  Prussia,  in 
Hungary,  in  Lombardy,  in  Poland,  the  people  were 
up  and  were  fighting  in  the  streets.  The  Republic 
was  proclaimed  in  Paris.  In  all  this  Maurice  and 

1  Leaders  of  the  Church,  1800-1900,  p.  60,  "  F.  D.  Maurice,"  by 
C.  F.  G.  Masterman. 


THE  NIGHT  OF  CHRISTENDOM        249 

Kingsley  recognised   the  end   of  an  epoch  and  the 
coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

If  any  preacher  had  tried  to  impress  you  with  the 
belief  that  some  signs  and  wonders  were  near  at  hand,  if 
he  had  tasked  his  imagination  or  his  skiir  in  interpreting 
the  hard  sayings  in  Scripture  to  tell  you  minutely  what 
those  signs  and  wonders  would  be,  are  you  not  sure  that 
his  anticipation  would  be  poor  and  cold  when  compared 
with  the  things  which  you  have  heard  of  and  almost 
seen?  .  .  .  Do  you  really  think  that  the  invasion  of 
Palestine  by  Sennacherib  was  a  greater  event  than  the 
overthrowing  of  nearly  all  the  greatest  powers,  civil  and 
ecclesiastical,  in  Christendom  ? l 

On  6th  May  1848  was  published  the  first  number 
of  Politics  for  the  People,  under  the  editorship  of 
Kingsley.  Physical  force  methods  were  repudiated  ; 
a  passionate  appeal  was  made  to  the  Church.  The 
editor  writes :  "  We  have  used  the  Bible  as  if  it  were 
a  mere  special  constable's  handbook,  an  opium  dose 
for  keeping  beasts  of  burden  patient  while  they 
are  being  overloaded,  a  mere  book  to  keep  the  poor 
in  order."  Maurice  was  often  alarmed  at  the 
vehemence  of  the  party  he  had  created,  but  he  stood 
by  his  friends.  Kingsley  was  like  a  flame.  He 
writes :  "  I  will  speak  in  season  and  out  of  season. 
My  path  is  clear  and  I  will  follow  it.  God  has  made 
the  Word  of  the  Lord  like  fire  within  my  bones, 
giving  me  no  peace  till  I  have  spoken  out." 

It  is  quite  possible  that  Maurice  and  Kingsley  and 
their  like  would  have  drawn  back  from  the  develop- 
ment of  economic  socialism  as  espoused  by  Church- 
men to-day  ;  but  just  as  the  abolition  of  slavery  is  an 

1  Quoted  by  Masterman,  ibid. 


25o      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

inevitable  deduction  from  Pauline  philosophy,  and 
the  Lollard  revolution  from  the  teachings  of  the 
theologian  who  repudiated  it,  so  Church  socialists  of 
the  present  owe  much  of  their  socialist  make-up  to 
these  Catholic  Fathers  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
In  them  the  voice  of  the  Catholic  Church,  so  long 
silenced,  had  once  more  been  uplifted. 


X 
BEFORE  THE  DAWN 

The  low-water  mark  in  theology  and  life — The  coming  of  dawn — The 
passing  of  Christo-capitalism —  Whateley  and  other  bishops  of 
mammon — The  Tractarians  and  Newman — Manufactured  indi- 
vidualistic revivals — Ritualism  and  social  reformation— Father 
Dolling— The  Guild  of  St  Matthew — The  teaching  of  Stewart 
Headlam — The  Christian  Social  Union— The  1908  Pan-Anglican 
Congress— Lambeth  Conferences  of  1867,  1878,  1888,  1908 — 
Episcopal  socialism  and  the  1907  report — Temporary  reaction — 
Socialistic  Nonconformity — A  Christo-capitalist  newspaper — The 
Roman  apostasy — Uncatholic  Puseyism — The  autocracy  of  Rome 
— Newman  and  Manning  on  the  right  of  the  starving  to  help  them- 
selves—An Italian  manifesto— A  Roman  socialist  and  the  Catholic 
Socialist  Society — Modern  heretics  and  their  newspapers — The 
condition  of  England,  a  slight  improvement  on  1840 — The  Church 
in  chains — International  federation  versus  imperialism  and  com- 
petition—The common  bond  of  socialism— The  opportunity  of  the 
Church  of  England — The  Church  Socialist  League. 


X 
BEFORE   THE    DAWN 

"I  have  set  watchmen  upon  thy  walls,  O  Jerusalem;  they  shall 
never  hold  their  peace  day  nor  night ;  ye  that  are  the  Lord's 
remembrancers,  take  ye  no  rest,  and  give  him  no  rest,  till  he  establish, 
and  till  he  make  Jerusalem  a  praise  in  the  earth.  The  Lord  hath  sworn 
by  his  right  hand,  and  by  the  arm  of  his  strength,  Surely  I  will  no 
more  give  thy  corn  to  be  meat  for  thine  enemies  ;  and  strangers  shall 
not  drink  thy  wine,  for  the  which  thou  hast  laboured  :  but  they  that 
have  garnered  it  shall  eat  it,  and  praise  the  Lord  ;  and  they  that  have 
gathered  it  shall  drink  it  in  the  courts  of  my  sanctuary."— ISAIAH  Ixiii. 

IT  is  generally  admitted  that  the  years  1800-1830 
show  the  low-water  mark  of  the  Catholic  democracy 
both  in  theology  and  daily  life.  Perhaps  neither 
commerce  nor  religion  can  ever  be  so  cruel  or  evil 
again.  The  popular  religion  of  our  day  is  weak  and 
nebulous,  the  condition  of  the  people  miserable ; 
but  the  worst  is  past,  and  we  are  witnessing  the 
faint  streaks  of  dawn.  Bishops  no  longer  openly 
justify  the  more  monstrous  forms  of  usury  and  slavery. 
Christo-capitalism  is  dying.  Its  defenders  are 
almost  silent.  The  Editor  of  the  Spectator  and 
the  Rev.  Lord  William  Cecil  receive  an  importance 
altogether  out  of  proportion  to  their  intellectual 
strength,  because  they  appear  to  be  the  sole  survivors 
of  ultra-individualism  at  Church  Congresses  and 


254     SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

other  official  gatherings.  This  curious  creed  lingered 
on  into  the  early  eighties.  By  1838  the  plutocrats 
had  so  gained  in  social  and  political  power  as  to  have 
become  formidable  rivals  of  the  landed  aristocracy. 
The  bishops  appointed  by  plutocratic  governments, 
and  as  yet  untouched  by  the  Oxford  Revival  or  the 
Catholicity  of  Maurice,  reflected  the  Christo-capitalism 
of  their  patrons.  We  find  Archbishop  Whately 
teaching :  "  The  Israelites  were  forbidden  in  the  law  of 
Moses  to  lend  to  their  brethren  on  usury,  that  is, 
interest.  But  they  were  allowed  by  God's  law  to 
receive  interest  on  the  loan  of  money  lent  to  a 
stranger,  and  this  shows  that  there  can  be  nothing 
wrong  in  receiving  interest"^  The  Bishop  of  Man- 
chester in  1880  wrote :  "  The  great  Founder  of  Christi- 
anity recognises  and  implicitly  sanctions  the  practice 
of  lending  money  at  interest.  '  Thou  oughtest  to  have 
put  my  money  to  the  exchangers,  and  then  at  my 
coming  I  should  have  received  mine  own  with  usury.' }>1 
About  the  same  time  the  Bishop  of  Rochester  writes  : 
"  Money,  like  every  other  talent,  is  to  be  made  the 
most  of;  and  it  is  our  duty  to  see  that  we  do  make 
the  most  of  it ;  ...  but  making  the  most  of  it  does 
not  necessarily  mean  the  highest  possible  return  for 
it ;  simply  the  highest  interest  compatible  with  good 
security."1 

To  what  extent,  it  may  be  asked,  did  the  Oxford 
Revival  of  1833  contribute  to  that  revolution  in 
thought  and  practice  which  is  bearing  the  English 
Church  along  in  the  direction  of  Catholic  democracy  ? 
Its  leaders  were  altogether  opposed  to  what  may 

1  Cf.  The  Churches  and  Usury,  pp.  41,  42. 


BEFORE    THE  DAWN  255 

be  called  the  Manchester  School  in  theology  and 
economics.  One  of  them  at  least  recognised  that 
there  were  political  implications  in  the  Christian 
faith.  If  the  fundamental  philosophy  of  socialism 
involves  the  worth  of  the  body  and  the  sensuous  life 
and  the  doctrine  of  fellowship,  the  Tractarians,  insist- 
ing on  the  outward  and  visible  Church  and  the 
ministry  of  men,  the  Incarnation  of  God  and  the 
Communion  of  the  Saints,  sensuous  worship  and  the 
need  of  man's  forgiveness,  were  helping  to  lay  the 
foundation  of  Catholicism  in  religion  and  socialism  in 
practice. 

But  the  virus  of  individualism  had  not  been 
expelled,  and  even  Newman,  the  genius  of  the 
movement,  remains  in  many  respects  a  Protestant 
to  the  end  of  his  life.  Mawkish  introspection  and 
disproportioned  next-worldliness  still  mark  their 
hymns  and  their  books  of  devotion.  Their  mission 
preachers,  though  touched  with  the  Catholic  spirit, 
are  not  always  clearly  distinguishable  from  Christo- 
capitalists  of  the  Torrey-Alexander  type.  The 
religion  of  these  latter  persons  is  now  so  unable 
to  revive  Christian  thought,  that  their  boasted 
revivals  are  rather  to  be  seen  on  the  hoardings 
than  in  the  hearts  of  men.  The  "ritualist" 
movement  of  to-day  tends  towards  social-demo- 
cratic ideals,  partly  because  it  is  the  practical 
development  of  Tractarianism,  but  largely  owing 
to  the  fact  that  it  is  infused  with  the  spirit 
of  Maurice-Kingsley  Catholicism.  Father  Dolling 
is  a  good  instance  of  this ;  he  was  not  a  socialist, 
but  his  sympathies  were  extremely  democratic 


256      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

and  socialistic.  He  had  probably  never  read  a 
word  of  Maurice,  but  in  the  preparation  of  his 
sermons  and  of  his  theological  defences  against  the 
attacks  of  the  bishops  he  generally  turned  to  a 
brother  priest  who  was  working  with  him  and  was 
one  of  his  greatest  friends.  This  priest  was  a 
thorough-going  Maurician. 

The  Guild  of  St  Matthew,  under  the  fearless  leader- 
ship of  Stewart  D.  Headlam,  carried  on  the  work  of 
the  Catholic  Democrats  of  1848.  This  Guild  claims 
to  be  the  first  socialist  society  in  England,  pre-dating 
even  the  Social  Democratic  Party.  Its  socialism  is 
certainly  more  uncompromising  than  that  of  Maurice, 
but  in  one  fundamental  it  differs  from  Maurice,  and 
in  another  from  the  economic  Church  socialists  of 
to-day.  Maurice  taught  that  the  Church  was  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  that  the 
Mass  was  the  witness  to  the  fellowship  of  that 
Kingdom.  Stewart  Headlam  teaches  that  the  Church 
is  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  sometimes  even  appears 
to  teach  that  the  Mass  is  the  fellowship  of  men.  In  a 
recent  speech,  he  told  the  Guild  that,  if  they  could 
not  get  people  to  be  socialists,  they  could  at  least  get 
them  to  go  to  Mass,  and  he  suggested  that  the  more 
or  less  universal  substitution  of  Mass  for  Matins  would 
almost  mechanically  work  out  into  an  economic 
revolution.  Italy  and  Spain  do  not  quite  bear  out 
this  contention.  The  Church  socialists  teach  that 
land  and  industrial  capital  must  be  in  the  hands  of 
the  whole  people  ;  the  Guild  would  tax  land  in  the 
hope  that  the  capitalists'  power  would  be  gone  when 
the  value  of  the  land  was  deflected  from  private 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  257 

pockets  to  the  pockets  of  the  community.  Mr 
Headlam  himself  does  not  seem  clear  upon  this  point, 
for  he  has  for  many  years  been  on  the  executive  of 
the  Fabian  Society,  who  have  pronounced  clearly  for 
the  public  ownership  of  both  land  and  capital.  The 
younger  members  of  the  Guild  are  invariably  on  the 
side  of  Mr  Headlam  of  the  Fabian  Society,  and 
against  Mr  Headlam  of  the  single  tax.  But  what- 
ever be  the  economic  position  of  this  little  Guild,  its 
theological  and  political  influence  on  the  thought  of 
Churchmen  has  been  incalculable.1 

The  Christian  Social  Union,  which  includes  many 
bishops,  and  has  a  membership  of  over  six  thousand  men 
and  women,  is  to  some  extent  the  child  of  the  Guild  of 
St  Matthew,  but  the  Guild  is  not  proud  of  its  offspring. 
It  glories  in  its  indefiniteness,  and  seems  to  consider 
it  a  crime  to  arrive  at  any  particular  economic  con- 
clusion. It  flings  a  wide  net,  gathering  both  good  and 
bad.  An  unkind  critic  has  described  it  as  for  ever  learn- 
ing, but  never  coming  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth.  But 
whatever  be  its  defects,  it  has  convinced  a  large  mass  of 
English  church-goers  of  the  importance  of  social  ques- 
tions. It  has  persuaded  them  that  the  Christian  religion 
essentially  involves  social  righteousness  in  some  form 
or  other.  The  danger  of  Social-Unionism  is  that  its 
leaders,  arriving  at  no  clear  dogma  in  theology  or  poli- 
tics, and  being  for  the  most  part  political  undenomina- 
tionalists,  have  no  fixed  standard  by  which  to  judge  the 
value  or  otherwise  of  any  suggested  social  reform. 

1  Readers  should  make  themselves  familiar  with  Mr  Headlam's  works, 
and  especially  with  his  Laws  of  Eternal  Life,  an  invaluable  commentary 
on  the  Church  Catechism  (Verinder,  376  Strand,  W.C. ;  3^.) 


258      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

The  Pan- Anglican  Congress  of  1908  was  a  triumph 
for  Christian  Social-Unionism.  The  idea  of  social 
responsibility,  and  of  a  close  union  between  politics 
and  religion,  dominated  the  huge  meetings  at  the 
Albert  Hall.  The  socialist  tendency  in  the  Church 
of  England  cannot  be  doubted,  for  if  even  the  bishops, 
appointed  by  anti-socialist  governments  and  recruited 
from  the  ranks,  not  of  the  ablest,  but  the  safest  men, 
are  becoming  influenced  by  socialist  thought,  the 
socialist  current  among  the  rank  and  file  must  indeed 
be  vigorous. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  bishops  are  becoming 
collectivist  because  it  pays,  for  any  tendency  in  this 
direction  is  at  once  met  by  alarming  diminution  in 
capitalistic  subscriptions  to  home  and  foreign  missions 
and  other  diocesan  funds.  It  is  more  difficult  now 
to  be  a  socialist  than  it  was  ten  years  ago.  People 
are  beginning  to  fear  and  hate  us,  for  they  have  nowa- 
days to  take  us  seriously. 

The  socialist  wave  in  episcopal  quarters  must  be 
attributed  to  another  cause. 

There  is  a  great  increase  in  the  ranks  of  those 
clergy  who  have  felt  the  converging  influence  of  the 
Oxford  Movement  and  the  Maurice-Scott-Holland- 
Headlam  Movement.  Their  ranks  have  swollen  so 
enormously  that  it  is  impossible  even  for  our  enemies 
to  choose  all  their  bishops  from  schools  of  thought 
entirely  uninfluenced  by  them.  Therefore  it  comes  to 
pass  that  many  of  our  prelates  believe  in  the  redemp- 
tion of  the  body,  in  the  sacredness  of  man's  material 
sensuous  life,  in  a  Divine  kingdom  of  justice  to  be 
set  up  here  and  now,  and  in  original  goodness. 


BEFORE    THE  DAWN  259 

Where  there  is  this  philosophy  there  will  be  the 
possibility  of  socialism. 

But  where  is  this  socialist  tendency  to  be  found 
among  the  bishops  ?  Let  us  look  at  the  facts. 

At  the  first  Lambeth  Conference,  in  1867,  social 
and  economic  questions  were  not  so  much  as 
mentioned.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  Lambeth 
Conferences  of  1878  and  1888.  Eleven  years  ago 
bishops  from  all  parts  of  the  English-speaking  world 
again  assembled  at  Lambeth,  and  the  Lambeth 
Encyclical  of  that  year  reports  that  many  think  the 
present  industrial  system  unjust,  urges  the  application 
of  the  principle  of  brotherhood  ;  for,  as  result  of  such 
application,  "  many  of  the  mischiefs  of  this  system 
would  ultimately  be  prevented." 

The  rich  must  be  warned  that  it  is  more  difficult 
for  them  to  enter  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  than  the 
poor.  The  poor  have  their  own  temptations  and 
troubles.  It  is  especially  the  duty  of  the  Church  to 
lessen  these  troubles ;  but  they  themselves  must  exert 
themselves  to  acquire  character  and  act  on  high 
principle.  Some  are  particularly  in  need  of  help, 
e.g.  the  unemployed.  Sympathy  and  study  are 
asked  of  Church  people.  The  letter  concludes  lamely 
enough  :  "  Help  in  individual  cases  of  need  is  the  task 
the  Master  gives  us."  The  appended  resolution 
commends  the  report  of  the  Lambeth  Committee. 
The  bishops  of  the  committee  are  glad  to  see  increased 
interest  of  Church  people  in  economic  questions. 
They  recognise  that  the  Church  represents  Christ 
here  and  now,  and  must  set  up  the  Kingdom  of  God 
here  in  our  midst,  and  must  redeem  the  bodies  as  well 


260      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

as  the  souls  of  men.  Nevertheless,  it  is  the  duty 
rather  of  laity  than  of  clergy  to  concern  themselves 
with  this  side  of  the  work,  discretion  is  needed,  and 
the  primary  duty  of  the  Church  is,  after  all,  to  the 
soul.  The  Church  must  not  pronounce  on  the  relative 
merits  of  socialism  and  individualism,  except  in  so 
far  as  it  is  bound  to  drive  in  the  following  fourfold 
wedge : — 

(a)  Brotherhood :  as  counterpoise  to  relentless 
competition. 

(U)  Labour.  Every  man  of  every  class  is  bound  to 
serve  mankind.  Idleness  is  not  permissible. 

(c)  Justice.     While  on  the  one  hand  "  inequalities 
are   inwoven   with   the   whole   providential   order   of 
human  life,"   and  would  seem  to  be  recognised  by 
Christ,  yet  on  the  other,  the  social  order  "  must  not 
ignore  the  interest  of  any  of  its  parts,  and  must  be 
tested  by  the  degree  in  which  it  secures    for   each, 
freedom  for  a  happy,  useful,  and  untrammelled  life, 
and  distributes  as  widely  as  possible  social  advantages 
and  opportunities." 

(d]  Public  responsibility.     "  Certain   conditions   of 
labour  are  intolerable."     We  repudiate  and  condemn 
"  open  breaches  of  social  justice,"  as  also  "  the  belief 
that  economic  conditions  are  to  be  left  to  the  action 
of  material  causes  uncontrolled  by  moral   responsi- 
bility," for  "A   Christian  community  is  responsible  for 
the  character  of  its  own  economic  and  social  order >  and 
for  deciding  to  what  extent  matters  affecting  that  order 
are  to  be  left  to  individual  initiative,  and  to  the  un- 
regulated play  of  economic  forces" 

So  far  and  no  further  had  the  official  Church  moved 


BEFORE   THE   DAWN  261 

by  1897.  But  I  know  of  no  official  statement  of  the 
bishops  since  that  date  which  does  not  fully  recognise 
that  the  mission  of  the  Church  is  to  set  up  a  Kingdom 
of  God  on  earth.  This  mission  is  insisted  upon  in  the 
present  Archbishop's  sermon  at  the  opening  of  the 
1908  Pan-Anglican  Congress  at  St  Paul's  Cathedral. 
The  Church  "  must  strive  more  valiantly  to  mend 
what  is  ignorant  and  amiss  in  the  world  around  us, 
and  to  hasten  on  earth  the  coming  of  our  Lord's 
Kingdom." 

Of  course,  utterances  of  individual  bishops  go  much 
further.  The  Bishop  of  Birmingham  tells  us  that  the 
socialistic  ideals  of  the  Master  and  of  the  early  Church 
included  the  living  wage,  the  right  to  work,  support 
for  the  weak,  the  aged,  and  the  children  ;  we  must 
return  to  those  ideals  "  if  possible  without  violence, 
but  in  any  case  return."  The  Bishop  of  Utah  frankly 
urges  Marxian  socialism  and  return  by  the  method 
of  revolution.  The  Archbishop  of  Melbourne  criticises 
the  practicability  of  certain  socialist  proposals,  but 
asserts  that  socialism  in  his  country  is  founded  on 
Christian  principles.  The  Bishop  of  London,  in 
words  almost  identical  with  those  of  the  new  Arch- 
bishop of  York,  speaks  of  the  ideals  underlying  the 
Labour  Movement,  "Justice,  Fellowship,  and  Equality 
of  Opportunity."  They  are  his  own  ideals.  The 
Bishop  of  Carlisle  urges  drastic  land  reforms  and  the 
equality  of  opportunity.  The  Bishop  of  Hereford's 
collectivist  radicalism  is  well  known.  The  Bishop 
of  Truro  demands  sympathetic  study  of  economic 
socialism,  and  the  Bishop  of  Wakefield  has  taken 
the  chair  for  Mr  Keir  Hardie. 


262      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

It  is  also  significant  that  the  son  of  Archbishop 
Temple,  and  sons  of  the  Bishops  of  Manchester  and 
Southwark,  and  many  others  coming  from  episcopal 
families,  are  socialists,  while  the  son  of  a  late  Arch- 
bishop of  York  has  spoken  from  I.L.P.  platforms. 

The  individual  utterances  of  bishops  do  not  perhaps 
count  for  much.  Some  prelates  are  apt  to  hedge  on 
other  occasions  and  destroy  much  of  the  force  of  their 
previous  words,  but  there  are  few  of  them  who  would 
not  now  endorse  Bishop  Westcott's  eulogium  on  the 
underlying  principles  of  Socialism  : — 

Individualism  regards  humanity  as  made  up  of  dis- 
connected and  warring  atoms;  socialism  regards  it  as  an 
organic  whole,  a  vital  unity  formed  by  the  combination  of 
contributory  members  mutually  interdependent.  It  follows 
that  socialism  differs  from  individualism  both  in  method 
and  in  aim.  The  method  of  socialism  is  co-operation ;  of 
individualism,  competition.  The  one  regards  man  as 
working  with  man  for  a  common  end;  the  other  regards 
man  as  working  against  man  for  private  gain.  The  aim  of 
socialism  is  the  fulfilment  of  service  ;  the  aim  of  individualism 
is  the  attainment  of  some  personal  advantage,  riches,  or 
place,  or  fame. 

After  the  "  socialist  field-day  "  of  the  Pan- Anglican 
Congress,  242  "archbishops  and  bishops  of  the 
Holy  Catholic  Church,  in  full  communion  with  the 
Church  of  England,  assembled  from  divers  parts 
of  the  earth  at  Lambeth  Palace,  in  the  year  of  our 
Lord  1908."  They  issue  an  Encyclical,  which 
defines  the  Church  as  ordained  for  the  welfare 
of  mankind  and  the  true  happiness  of  all.  The 
democratic  movement  presents  an  opportunity  for 
Christian  service,  for  its  ideals  are  the  Christian 
ideals  of  "  brotherhood,  liberty,  and  mutual  justice." 


BEFORE    THE  DAWN  263 

For  these  ideals  underlying  social  democracy  the 
242  bishops  claim  Christ's  sanction,  and  the  teach- 
ing of  the  ancient  prophets.  "  We  call  upon  the 
Church  to  consider  how  far  and  wherein  it  has 
departed  from  these  truths.  .  .  .  In  so  far  as  the 
democratic  and  industrial  movement  is  animated  by 
these  ideals  and  strives  to  procure  for  all,  especially 
for  the  weaker,  JUST  TREATMENT  AND  A  REAL 
OPPORTUNITY  OF  LIVING  A  TRUE  HUMAN  LIFE, 
WE  APPEAL  TO  ALL  CHRISTIANS  TO  CO-OPERATE 
ACTIVELY  WITH  IT."  This  appeal  is  then  in- 
corporated in  the  formal  resolutions,  which  conclude : 
"  The  social  mission  and  social  principles  of  Christi- 
anity should  be  given  a  more  prominent  place  in  the 
study  and  teaching  of  the  Church,  both  for  the  clergy 
and  laity." 

The  242  archbishops  and  bishops  assembled  at 
Lambeth  urge  upon  Church  people  the  consideration 
of  the  report  of  their  own  committee  of  twenty- seven 
bishops,  and  of  the  report  of  a  committee  of  Convoca- 
tion published  in  1907. 

These  documents  of  the  National  Church  will  prob- 
ably be  looked  upon  by  future  ecclesiastical  historians 
as  by  far  the  most  important  pronouncements  of 
Anglican  bishops  since  the  beginnings  of  the 
Reformation. 

Their  object  is  to  consider  "the  tidal  wave  of 
democracy,  flowing  in  the  direction  of  social  recon- 
struction." They  note  with  satisfaction  "the  new 
prominence  given  to  the  wage-earners,"  "  the  growing 
sense  of  dissatisfaction,"  "the  claim  increasing  in 
intensity  for  justice  in  the  distribution  of  the  proceeds 


264      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

of  industry,"  as  also  the  universality  of  the  movement. 
They  continue  as  follows  : — 

"  It  is  the  privilege  of  the  Church  to  welcome  this 
movement  as  one  of  the  great  developments  of  human 
history,  which  have  behind  them  the  authority  of 
God.  It  follows  that  it  is  the  mission  of  the  Church 
to  help  to  keep  the  spirit  of  democracy  true  to  the 
Divine  purpose.  Its  aim,  therefore,  will  be  to  assert 
a  claim,  and  to  recognise  an  obligation." 

"  The  Claim. — That  the  whole  sphere  of  human  life, 
material  as  well  as  spiritual,  must  be  consecrated  to 
the  highest  purpose ;  that  every  human  aspiration, 
that  every  natural  human  desire,  is  meant  to  find 
its  legitimate  satisfaction,  while  all  human  wills 
and  activities  must  be  brought  under  the  sway  of 
Christian  law." 

"  The  Obligation. — That  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Church 
to  apply  the  truths  and  principles  of  Christianity, 
especially  the  fundamental  truths  of  the  Fatherhood 
of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man,  to  the  solution 
of  social  and  economic  difficulties,  to  awaken  and 
educate  the  social  conscience,  to  further  its  expression 
in  legislation  (while  preserving  its  own  independence 
of  political  party),  and  to  strive,  above  all,  to  present 
Christ  before  men  as  a  living  Lord  and  King  in  the 
realm  of  common  life." 

"An  attitude  of  aloofness  on  the  part  of  the 
Church,  or  timidity  in  facing  its  obligation,  can  only 
mean  a  serious  failure  in  its  work  and  a  hindrance  to 
its  influence,  and  must  tend  to  strengthen  the  feeling 
amongst  the  wage-earners  that  the  Church  is  the  ally 
of  the  comfortable  rather  than  of  the  poor,  and  that 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  265 

it  identifies  itself  with  the  interests  of  wealth  and 
property ;  with  the  result  that  the  people  become 
indifferent  to  the  Church,  distrustful  of  its  interest  in 
their  lives,  and  persuaded  that  it  is  out  of  sympathy 
with  their  hopes  and  aims." 

"The  question  inevitably  arises,  Why  does  the 
Church  fail  to  win  the  sympathy  and  regard  of  those 
who  seek  an  ideal  so  largely  in  accord  with  the  Lord's 
own  principles,  since  it  is  plainly  wrong  to  suppose 
that  this  democratic  movement  is  in  itself  atheistic 
or  antichristian  ?  " 

The  answer  is  to  be  found  on  the  one  hand  in  the 
shameful  divisions  of  Christendom,  in  the  lack  of 
practical  fellowship,  in  autocratic  methods  of  Church 
government ;  and  on  the  other  hand  in  elements  of 
individual  and  class  selfishness  and  an  inadequate 
perception  of  the  need  of  individual  redemption  from 
the  dominion  of  sin. 

They  reprove  the  Church  for  being  too  slack  in 
establishing  groups  everywhere  for  the  study  of  social 
and  economic  questions  (groups  suggested  by  them 
in  their  1897  report).  Such  groups  of  Christian  men 
and  women  should  "  make  it  their  aim  to  bring  the 
sense  of  justice  .  .  .  which  is  common  to  Christianity 
and  to  Democracy  to  bear  upon  matters  of  everyday 
life  in  trade,  in  society,  etc." 

"  We  need  Christian  men  and  women  who  will  give 
serious  study  to  social  problems  and  make  the  best 
of  their  opportunities  of  training  in  social  service ; 
who  will  then  be  qualified  to  take  their  place  on 
public  administrative  bodies,  both  local  and  national ; 
who  will  protest  both  by  word  and  example,  both  in 


266      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

public  and  in  private,  against  anything  that  is 
immoral  or  unjust ;  who  will  call  into  action  any 
legislative  machinery  which  already  exists  for  the 
public  welfare,  and  stir  up  public  opinion  on  behalf 
of  the  removal  of  wrong  wherever  it  may  be  found, 
thus  making  an  earnest  endeavour  to  share  in  the 
transforming  work  of  Christianity  '  for  their  brethren 
and  companions'  sake.' " 

"  In  other  words,  the  Church  must  concentrate  its 
resources  on  recreating,  inspiring,  and  using  its  own 
Demos,  making  of  it  a  truly  elect  people,  a  laity,  an 
instructed  and  disciplined  '  people  of  God.'  But  this 
Church  'laity'  is  to  be  raised  up  for  service  to  the 
whole  nation  and  to  the  world,  and  not  for  merely 
denominational  interests ;  men  of  all  classes  of 
society  united  as  comrades  to  fight  the  battle  of  the 
Lord  against  sin,  the  world,  and  the  devil  by  virtue 
of  their  baptism." 

"This  will  lead  on  to  a  more  general  revelation 
of  brotherhood  in  the  Church  itself,  without  which 
it  is  hopeless  to  expect  to  be  able  to  win  the 
confidence  of  the  people." 

"  On  matters  of  public  morality  and  social  reform 
Christians  of  various  denominations  can  and  do  co- 
operate, and  it  is  therefore  hoped  that  in  this  way 
also  the  common  service  of  men  will  increasingly 
draw  together  those  who  are  otherwise  grievously 
divided." 

The  Church  must  be  active  in  proclaiming  national 
and  international  justice,  the  laws  of  health,  the 
importance  of  self-education,  and  in  warning  the 
rich  of  the  sin  of  idleness,  the  incompatibility  of 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  267 

selfish  luxury  with  professing  Christianity,  and  "  the 
duty  of  substituting  justice  ...  for  a  condescending 
and  thoughtless  benevolence." 

They  then  insist  on  a  thorough  overhauling  of 
Church  government  in  a  democratic  direction,  the 
upholding  of  material  good  and  of  spiritual  vision 
as  both  necessary  to  the  development  of  the  people, 
for  this  is  the  dual  ideal  of  "the  ever-present 
Kingdom  of  God." 

The  Lambeth  Conference  further  urges  the  careful 
study  of  the  report  of  1907  issued  by  the  bishops, 
deans,  etc.,  assembled  as  a  committee  of  the  Con- 
vocation of  Canterbury.1  The  Report  commences 
with  a  root-and-branch  repudiation  of  Manches- 
terianism  or  individualist  commercialism,  and  approves 
the  teachings  of  "those  deep-seeing  men,  Carlyle, 
Maurice,  and  Ruskin."  Modern  economists  are  right 
when  they  assert  that — 

"  The  majority  of  men  are  found  to  be  not  free  to 
bargain,  or  to  pursue  their  own  interests.  They  are 
too  weak  and  ignorant.  They  are  exploited  by  the 
strong.  .  .  .  The  real  end  of  industrial  organisation  is 
to  combine  efficient  production  with  such  a  distribu- 
tion of  the  commodities  produced  as  will  enable  the 
greatest  number  of  people  to  find  a  full  opportunity 
of  self-realisation  and  joy." 

"The  true  riches  of  a  nation  are  vigorous  and 
happy  men  and  women,  willingly  and  intelligently 
co-operating  for  the  good  of  the  community." 

The  report  proceeds  to  show   that  the   Christian 

1  Cf.  S.P.C.K.  2d.  Report  of  Committee  of  Convocation  on 
Economic  Questions,  1907. 


268      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

religion  is  a  development  from  that  of  the  Jews, 
whose  Old  Testament  legislation  insisted  on  a  just 
wage,  prohibited  interest,  and  secured  the  land  to 
the  people,  denouncing  the  exploitation  of  the  poor. 
In  Old  Testament  times  private  gain  was  restricted 
by  public  well-being ;  manual  labour  is  the  necessary 
basis  of  society.  We  are  not  bound  by  the  letter 
and  detail,  but  we  are  bound  by  the  moral  prin- 
ciples underlying  this  legislation.  Christ  deepened 
and  universalised  Old  Testament  conceptions.  Now, 
the  neighbour  is  "everyone  who  has  need."  The 
pursuit  of  riches  is  condemned.  "  Each  is  to  work 
with  his  own  hands  to  support  the  weak,  that  he  may 
have  to  give  to  him  that  needeth."  These  principles 
apply  not  only  to  the  Church,  but  also  to  the  State. 
"  Individual  salvation  .  .  .  has  been  disastrously 
isolated  .  .  .  from  the  social  idea  of  original 
Christianity  and  the  teaching  of  brotherhood." 

"  Christ,  our  Master  and  severe  Judge,  holds  us 
responsible  for  every  one  of  His  members  whose  life 
has  been  wasted  by  our  common  neglect."  "  Idle- 
ness, whether  it  is  that  of  the  rich  or  the  poor  man,  is 
an  offence  against  God  and  man." 

"  It  is  intolerable  that  any  part  of  our  industry 
should  be  organised  upon  the  foundation  of  the 
misery  and  want  of  the  labourer." 

The  doctrine  of  the  "  living  wage  "  is  then  insisted 
on,  and  the  duty  of  consumers  considered.  Private 
action  must  be  pushed  as  far  as  possible,  but  "  un- 
doubtedly the  individual  by  his  private  action  is  able 
to  do  little  to  alter  what  is  amiss.  The  law  must 
help — that  is,  the  expressed  will  and  power  of  the 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  269 

\ 

whole  community."  Churchmen  must  insist  on 
carrying  out  the  present  Factory,  Truck,  and  Sanita- 
tion Acts  ;  but,  furthermore,  although  the  committee 
do  not  think  it  wise  for  the  Church  as  a  society  to 
identify  itself  with  any  one  particular  political  party  > 
and  while  they  urge  fairness  in  preaching  justice  and 
goodwill  to  all  men,  and  particularly  warn  preachers 
against  mere  flattery  of  and  toadying  to  the  artisan 
class,  yet  they  are  compelled  "to  urge  that  the 
Christian  Church  should  make  clear  to  itself  the 
nature  of  the  demand  for  the  reconstruction  of  society 
which  is  at  present  urged  upon  us.  Behind  the  more 
technical  (industrial  and  political)  proposals  lies  a 
fundamental  appeal  for  justice,  which  the  Christian 
Church  cannot  ignore.  It  is  bound  to  make  a  much 
more  thorough  endeavour  than  it  has  yet  made  to 
appreciate  this  appeal  in  all  its  bearings;  and  to 
consider  whether  the  charge  made  against  the  present 
constitution  and  principles  of  the  industrial  world, 
and  the  present  division  of  the  profits  of  industry, 
is  a  just  charge.  Certainly  the  Christian  society  is 
competent  to  deal  with  the  fundamental  moral 
question,  and  is  bound  to  press  upon  its  members  the 
duty  of  facing  it." 

Then,  in  consequence  of  such  deepened  reflection 
upon  the  fundamental  moral  issue,  it  is  undoubtedly 
the  case  that  we  shall  need  an  advance  in  our  present 
law  touching  social  and  industrial  problems.  "  It  is 
time,  we  think,  that  the  Christian  conscience  of  the 
country  voted  urgency'  among  parliamentary  and 
municipal  questions  for  all  the  group  of  problems 
which  concern  the  grossly  unequal  distribution  of 


270      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

wealth  and  well-being ;  the  waste  of  life  and  capacity 
through  lack  of  proper  nourishment  and  training  ; 
the  sweating  of  women's  and  children's  labour ;  the 
deficiency,  in  the  surroundings  of  so  many,  of  those 
things  which  are  the  ordinary  essentials  of  physical 
and  moral  well-being." 

"  We  are  convinced  that  the  Church  has  a  teaching 
which  it  ought  to  give  on  all  matters  which  concern 
the  acquisition  and  distribution  of  wealth,  in  its 
bearing  on  human  lives;  and  that  this  teaching 
involves  not  only  private  effort,  but  municipal  and 
political  reforms.  Thus  we  want  the  Church  as  a 
body  to  come  forward  to  the  support  of  such  legisla- 
tion as  embodies  or  tends  to  render  more  practicable 
the  Christian  view  of  the  worth  and  meaning  of  human 
life,  and  the  belief  in  the  Divine  principle  of  justice." 

Church  people  who  are  dominated  by  this  ideal 
must  come  forward  as  voters  and  candidates  for 
parliamentary  and  municipal  elections ;  for  although 
the  older  systems  of  alms-giving  and  the  like  must 
not  be  neglected,  "  something  more  is  wanted  than 
improvements  in  our  methods  of  administering  chari- 
table relief.  We  have  to  go  deeper  to  the  grounds  of 
the  existing  misery  and  want  and  unemployment ; 
and  while  we  do  our  best  to  deal  with  the  present 
distress,  direct  our  chief  attention  towards  furthering 
the  reorganisation  of  society  on  such  principles  of 
justice  as  will  tend  to  reduce  poverty  and  misery  in 
the  future  to  more  manageable  proportions." 

This,  then,  is  the  official  teaching  of  the  National 
Church,  as  seen  in  the  most  recent  deliberations  of 
her  bishops  on  the  subject  of  social  democracy. 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  271 

A  reaction  has  set  in  since  the  Lambeth  pronounce- 
ments. The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury — that  same 
Archbishop  who  bids  us  do  all  in  our  power  to  bring 
in  God's  Kingdom  here  on  earth,  and  who  refuses  a 
five  minutes'  interview  with  the  Leicester  unem- 
ployed, after  their  tramp  to  London  under  the  leader- 
ship of  Lewis  Donaldson,  a  loyal  priest  of  the 
National  Church — seems  bent  on  perpetuating  the 
heretical  divorce  between  things  spiritual  and  things 
material.1  The  Archbishop  of  York,  dissociating 
himself  from  economic  socialists,  defends  them  from 
their  baser  assailants,  supports  their  ethical  assump- 
tions, and  certain  of  their  political  proposals.  The 
forces  of  plutocracy  are  doing  all  in  their  power  to 
stifle  the  bishops  and  prevent  a  repetition  of  the 
Lambeth  pronouncements,  but  the  episcopal  reaction 
can  only  be  temporary. 

The  revolution  in  thought  is  not  confined  to  the 
Church  of  England.  The  movement  known  as  the 
New  Theology  expresses  itself  politically  in  many 
cases  in  socialistic  schemes.  The  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell's 
Progressive  League,  which  numbers  many  thousands 
of  members,  although  it  does  not  tie  its  people  to 
economic  socialism,  is  largely  socialist  in  tendency. 
Not  only  the  new  theologians, like  Mr  Campbell  and  Mr 
Rhondda  Williams,  but  older- fashioned  theologians,  Mr 
Rattenbury,  Mr  Kirtlan,  and  Dr  Clifford,  are  socialists 
and  belong  to  some  economic  socialist  society.  An 
undenominational  international  body  known  as  "  The 
Christian  Socialist  Fellowship,"  urging  the  national- 

1  Cf.  the  reason  given  by  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  for  not  voting 
on  the  Budget  proposals  of  the  Liberal  Government  of  1909. 


272      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

isation  of  land  and  capital,  is  making  rapid  progress ; 
while  the  Free  Church  Socialist  League,  formed  in 
1909,  has  considerable  chance  of  success,  although  we 
have  yet  to  learn  the  nature  of  its  economic  basis. 
This  socialist  movement  among  Nonconformist 
bodies  is  the  expression  of  their  abandonment  of 
their  original  reasons  for  schism  from  the  National 
Church.  Most  of  the  leaders  frankly  state  that  they 
have  no  particular  quarrel  with  the  English  Church, 
and  see  no  essential  value  in  separation  from  her. 
The  term  Catholic  has  no  longer  any  terrors  for  them, 
and,  though  their  theology  is  often  hazy,  such  as  it  is, 
it  is  an  approach  to  the  Catholic  faith  in  the  value  of 
fellowship  and  of  outward  life,  and  a  frank  denial  of 
Calvinism  and  the  capitalistic  religions  of  the  recent 
night.  Sensuous  worship  is  no  longer  held  up  to 
ridicule,  some  form  of  liturgy  is  often  adopted,  Catholic 
views  of  the  next  world  often  held.  It  is  not  a  very 
far  step  from  all  this  to  the  recognition  of  one  outward 
and  visible  fellowship  among  men. 

Official  Dissent  stands  outside  this  Catholic  move- 
ment among  Nonconformists.  The  most  popular 
Nonconformist  journal  still  stands  frankly  for  the  old 
Christo-capitalism.  It  is  always  ready  to  whitewash 
a  plutocratic  sweater,  so  long  as  he  shows  the  necessary 
interest  in  missionaries,  is  severe  about  Sunday,  and 
sufficiently  lavish  in  his  donations  to  chapel  building 
funds.  Some  months  back  I  was  taken  over  the 
worst  slums  in  Glasgow — perhaps  the  worst  in 
Europe — and  we  had  waded  through  darkness,  filth, 
and  misery,  and  come  out  at  the  other  end  with  sore 
hearts  and  sore  throats.  The  wages  of  this  slumdom 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  273 

were  in  some  cases  i6s.  lod.  a  week ;  the  hours  of 
work  and  the  rents  were  monstrous.  The  workers 
are  the  victims  of  a  loathsome  skin  disease  arising 
from  the  chemical  vapours  in  which  they  are  compelled 
to  labour.  At  one  time  no  meal-hours  were  allowed, 
and  the  regime  was  a  twelve-hour  day  and  a  seven- 
day  week.  When  the  pious  employer  who  was 
responsible  for  this  state  of  things  was  attacked,  and 
a  Nonconformist  minister  had  sent  back  a  cheque  for 
a  chapel  building  fund,  saying  he  did  not  like  to 
partake  in  the  price  of  blood,  the  journal  in  question 
came  to  the  defence  of  the  princely  philanthropist, 
and  was  particularly  insulting  to  his  critics.  At  the 
time  of  his  death,  a  writer  in  this  same  journal  gushed 
over  the  wonderful  city,  Glasgow,  with  its  "  numbers 
of  men  of  commercial  standing  and  repute  .  .  .  who 
cling  to  Evangelical  principles,  and  while  diligent  in 
business  find  in  religious  work  for  the  benefit  of  their 
humbler  fellow-creatures  the  romance  of  their  lives." 
Referring  lightly  to  the  attack  on  the  conduct  of  his 
business,  the  writer  suggests  that  it  did  not  weaken  his 
influence  among  business  men,  "  for  he  kept  straight 
on  his  course,  and  people  bethought  them  that  a  man 
of  such  obvious  goodness  could  not  consciously  be 
guilty  of  injustice  to  others."  Fever-ridden  slums  and 
poison-infested  works  are  too  close  to  the  Christo- 
capitalists  and  too  necessary  for  their  existence  for 
them  to  trouble  much  about  them ;  but,  says  our 
eulogist,  '  at  one  time,  hearing  of  the  danger  of  typhoid 
fever  in  Livingstonia,  he  gave  ^"4000  to  provide  and 
send  out  several  miles  of  steel  piping  to  bring  pure 
and  unadulterated  water  into  the  mission  station." 

18 


274      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

Is  it  any  wonder  that,  so  long  as  this  journal 
calls  itself  Christian,  Mr  Robert  Blatchford  should 
prefer  to  call  himself  agnostic  ? 

It  has  been  suggested  in  a  former  chapter  that  the 
schisms  in  Europe  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation 
narrowed  down  the  Church  of  Rome  as  much  as  any 
other  body.  A  study  of  her  popular  books  of  de- 
votion, sermons,  and  hymnology  would  suggest  that 
she  has  been  visited  with  neurotic  introspection  and 
intellectual  barrenness.  The  Catholic  faith  is  more 
completely  denied  in  the  official  Roman  body  than 
among  certain  English  Dissenters.  The  High  Church 
Puseyite,  in  spite  of  his  many  social  virtues,  has  done 
his  best  to  perpetuate  or  revive  certain  evil  tendencies 
in  early  Church  history.  He  treats  the  Christian 
ministry  as  a  separate  class  receiving  its  authority, 
not  from  the  whole  priestly  democracy,  but  from 
some  distant  planet.  He  calls  this  the  authority 
"  from  above,"  and  describes  democratic  authority  as 
"  from  below,"  thereby  destroying  the  Catholic  idea  of 
the  Church.  Papal  Catholicism  is,  however,  the  logical 
development  of  High  Church  sectarianism.  In  this 
system,  not  only  is  the  priestly  body  of  the  people 
ignored,  but  it  is  counted  anathema  that  even  the 
priest-caste  and  their  bishops  should  be  considered 
authoritative.  The  groundwork  of  modern! Romanism, 
and  to  some  extent  of  Puseyism,  is  that  God  is  really 
absent  from  the  world.  Their  doctrine  of  the  Real 
Presence  is  a  corollary  of  the  Real  Absence.  God  is 
the  occasional  visitor,  who  must  be  brought  down 
into  the  world  in  Mass  wafers  and  Papal  encyclicals. 
Nowadays  the  issue  is  Vaticanism  versus  Catholicism. 


BEFORE    THE  DAWN  275 

The  Pope  claims  to  be,  not  only  above,  but  apart 
from  the  bishops,  priests,  and  councils,  sole  emperor 
on  earth  representing  the  Sole  Emperor  in  heaven. 
The  following  are  typical  pronouncements  of  modern 
official  Romanism : — 

The  proposition  which  defines  that  power  has  been 
given  by  God  to  the  Church  to  be  communicated  to  pastors 
who  are  its  ministers  for  the  salvation  of  the  soul ;  under- 
stood in  the  sense  that  the  power  of  ecclesiastical  ministra- 
tion and  government  in  the  pastors,  is  derived  from  the 
body  of  the  faithful ;  heretical.1 

Moreover,  the  proposition  which  defines  that  the 
Pontiff  is  the  Administering  Head ;  explained  in  the  sense 
that  the  Roman  Pontiff  receives  his  administrative  authority, 
not  from  Christ  in  the  person  of  St  Peter,  but  receives  from 
the  Church  his  power  of  administration,  by  which  as  the 
successor  of  Peter,  the  true  vicar  of  Christ  and  head  of  the 
whole  Church,  he  rules  in  the  universal  Church ;  heretical.1 

Papal  and  High  Church  journals  alike  condemn 
the  Catholic  democrat  for  holding  that  the  inter- 
national Christian  democracy  is  a  royal  priesthood, 
and  that,  for  the  sake  of  Holy  Orders,  bishops,  priests, 
and  deacons  are  appointed  from  the  whole  priestly 
body  for  different  functions  and  administrations,  and 
that  the  official  priesthood  is  the  mouthpiece  of  the 
Christian  democracy.  As  a  Roman  modernist  has 
recently  said,  "  the  theocratic  conception  of  ecclesias- 
tical authority  is  incompatible  with  democracy, 
whether  the  authority  be  Papal,  Episcopal,  or 
Sacerdotal.  If  ecclesiastical  authority  is  to  justify 
itself,  it  must  be  of  the  people,  for  the  people,  by  the 
people.  The  Church  must  be  democratised,  or  it 

1  Encyclical  on  Modernism,  "  Pascendi,"  footnotes. 


276      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

cannot  survive  ;  and  after  all,  in  democratising  itself 
it  will  but  return  to  its  first  principle."  Cardinal 
Newman,  who  is  sometimes  claimed  by  modernists 
as  their  precursor,  would  have  shrunk  from  such 
sentiments.  Cardinal  Manning  was  theologically 
narrower  than  his  rival ;  but  his  heart  outran  his 
intellect,  and  although  he  was  incapable  of  thinking 
out  a  fundamental  Catholic  theology  or  of  coming  to 
any  clear  economic  conclusions,  he  put  himself  at 
the  head  of  the  movement  among  the  dockers  and 
other  unskilled  labourers,  and  wrote  bravely  in 
defence  of  what  was  called  the  New  Unionism. 
Especially  bold  was  his  defence  in  the  Fortnightly 
Review  of  the  right  of  starving  men  to  steal. 
The  Archbishop  of  Toronto,  in  a  letter  to  the 
Chicago  Times,  defended  Manning,  asserting  that 
there  was  never  any  doubt,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  Catholic  tradition,  about  the  duty  of  stealing 
rather  than  starving.  Archbishop  M'Hale  also 
supported  them.1  Compare  their  contention  with 
Cardinal  Newman's  note  to  the  Apologia,  where  he 
admits  as  indisputable  the  right  of  starving  men  to 
help  themselves. 

There  is  considerable  plain  speaking  on  social 
subjects  on  the  part  of  a  small  section  of  the  French 
clergy  to-day,  but  the  recent  claims  of  the  Papacy 
and  its  anti-socialist  attitude  make  their  position  one 
of  great  difficulty.  The  clergy  during  the  period  of 
the  Revolution  for  the  most  part  sided  with  the 
aristocracy,  but  Lamennais  and  a  vigorous  minority 
of  priests  and  lay  people  brought  new  life  into  the 

1  Nitti,  Catholic  Socialism,  p.  381. 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  277 

Church  of  France  from  1840  to  1848.  In  the  thirties 
the  Catholic  cause  was  almost  universally  thought  to 
be  lost.  In  1843  tne  Church  had  only  one  friend 
in  Parliament.  In  1846  the  one  had  become  one 
hundred  and  forty-six.  In  1848  the  Church  party 
was  equally  successful. 

There  is  in  Italy  a  Catholic  democratic  move- 
ment, anti-clerical  and  anti-papist,  which  in  many 
respects  recalls  the  action  of  priests,  monks,  and 
laity  under  Garibaldi.  Its  adherents  published  in 
1908  a  manifesto  entitled  Why  we  are  Christian 
Socialists,  which  quotes  with  approval  one  of  the 
speakers  of  the  Pan-Anglican  Congress  where  he 
says :  "  The  Church  should  open  her  doors  to  this 
new  current  of  Christian  life  which  is  bursting  forth 
from  the  troubled  conscience  of  the  masses."  The 
time  will  come  in  which  "  Christian  brotherhood 
will  triumph  completely,"  but  this  will  only  be  "when 
the  chains  of  servitude,  which  have  been  forged  by 
property  and  the  wage  system,  shall  have  been  broken, 
and  society  shall  have  become  a  union  of  equals,  each 
of  whom  shall  fulfil  his  own  task  and  be  able  to 
honour  fully  the  claims  of  his  own  spiritual  person- 
ality." Mr  A.  L.  Lilley  quotes  this  remarkable 
document  as  saying  that,  "  if  the  dogma  of  original 
sin  has  a  meaning  for  us,  it  is  in  so  far  as  it  may  be 
regarded  as  the  theological  symbol  of  the  origin  of 
private  property.  Indeed,  on  the  day  that  man  first 
said,  Mine  and  thine,  with  regard  to  the  means  of 
production,  the  curse  of  God  fell  upon  the  human 
race  and  its  uninterrupted  disaster  began."  "The 
Gospel  flourishes  anew  in  this  dawn  of  democratic 


278      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

expectation.  For  Christ  against  the  Vatican — that 
is  our  motto ;  for  socialism  against  all  the  parties  of 
reaction  and  conservatism." l 

A  faithful  band  of  Roman  Catholic  socialist  laymen 
in  Scotland  and  England  find  themselves  in  a  painful 
dilemma.  One  of  their  most  progressive  bishops  tells 
them  that  it  is  no  more  possible  for  a  Catholic  to  be 
a  socialist  than  it  is  for  him  to  be  a  Wesleyan.  A 
Roman  Catholic  writer  in  the  Clarion,  March  1909, 
fears  that  the  Papacy  now  claims  infallibility  in 
matters  political  as  well  as  in  matters  of  faith  and 
morals.  The  Catholic  Times,  the  most  influential 
Roman  weekly  in  this  country,  declares  socialism  to 
have  been  condemned  in  the  Encyclical  Rerum 
Novarum  of  I5th  May  1891,  and  the  Encyclical  on 
Christian  Democracy  of  i8th  January  1901.  Despite 
these  denunciations  from  headquarters,  there  are  a  few 
brave  Roman  priests  in  Europe  and  in  America,  and 
many  laymen,  who  are  Catholic  in  their  economic 
ideas  as  well  as  in  name.  The  Rev.  John  A.  Ryan, 
D.D.,  argues  in  the  Catholic  Fortnightly  Review^  an 
American  publication,  that  the  teaching  of  Leo  XIII. 
was  aimed  at  communism  rather  than  socialism. 
According  to  this  theologian,  a  Roman  Catholic  may 
quite  properly  believe  and  advocate  that — 

The  instruments  of  production  and  exchange  should  be 
owned  and  managed  by  the  community,  but  the  private 
owners  of  these  instruments  should  receive  fair  compensation. 

Landowners  should  receive  from  the  State  as  much  as 
they  have  paid  for  their  land,  and  should  be  permitted  to 
retain  permanently  and  to  transfer  or  transmit  the  land  that 

1  Quoted  by  A.  L.  Lilley,  Church  Socialist  Quarterly,  Jan.  1909. 


i 


BEFORE    THE  DAWN  279 

they  cultivate  or  occupy,  but  should  be  compelled  to  pay 
to  the  State  annually  its  full  rental  value,  exclusive  of 
improvements. 

Since  the  great  industries  managed  by  the  State  would  set 
the  pace,  small  industries  which  an  individual  could  operate 
by  himself  or  with  the  help  of  two  or  three  others  might 
remain  private.  This  would  involve  private  ownership  of 
the  simple  machinery  and  tools  used  in  such  industries — for 
example,  agricultural  implements  and  the  sewing-machine  of 
the  custom  tailor  or  dressmaker. 

The  incomes  of  persons  employed  by  the  community 
should  be  regulated  by  needs,  efforts,  productivity,  the  social 
welfare,  and  not  merely  by  the  principle  of  equality. 

All  goods  which  immediately  satisfy  man's  wants,  such  as 
food,  clothing,  dwellings,  furniture,  utensils,  etc.,  should  be 
privately  owned,  and  subject  to  full  power  of  disposal  by  the 
proprietor. 

The  integrity  of  the  family  and  parental  control  over  the 
children  should  be  as  secure  as  Catholic  teaching  desires. 

Until  recently,  as  has  been  said,  the  construction 
of  modern  socialism  has  been  undertaken  for  the 
most  part  by  men  who,  though  they  are  often 
Churchmen  by  the  fact  of  their  baptism,  have  repudi- 
ated the  theology  and  practice  of  the  Church  as  it 
presented  itself  to  them.  The  Agnostics  are  just  as 
much  Christian  heretics  as  the  Puseyite  and  the 
Evangelical ;  each  holds  strenuously  by  some  portion 
of  the  Catholic  faith,  each  denies  some  other  equally 
essential  aspects  of  it.  Calvin  and  Dr  Pusey  believed 
in  God  and  not  in  man.  Marx  and  Belfort  Bax 
believe  in  man  and  not  in  God.  Many  High  Church- 
men believe  in  original  sin,  but  not  in  original  right- 
eousness. Many  Atheists  believe  in  original  righteous- 
ness but  not  in  original  sin.  Mr  Bernard  Shaw 
believes  in  God's  goodness,  but  not  in  His  power. 


280      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

The  Revivalists  believe  in  God's  power,  but  not  in 
His  goodness.  The  editors  of  the  Church  Times, 
the  Clarion,  the  Guardian,  the  Agnostic  Annual,  and 
the  British  Weekly  respectively  believe  and  respec- 
tively repudiate  integral  portions  and  implications 
of  the  Catholic  faith.  We  might  well  exclaim 
with  St  Paul,  thinking  of  our  own  people 
and  of  our  own  times,  "  He  hath  included  all 
under  sin,  that  He  might  have  mercy  upon  all." 
There  is  in  Agnosticism  a  real  movement  nowadays 
towards  the  Catholic  religion  ;  there  is  in  "  Ritualism  " 
as  evident  a  movement  in  that  direction.  The  Neo- 
Evangelicals  have  abandoned  their  irreconcilability; 
Nonconformists  have  abandoned  the  very  reasons  of 
their  schism.  Modernist  Romans  are  joining  hands 
with  democratic  Anglicans,  Agnostics,  Presbyterians, 
and  Dissenters.  The  socialist  movement  is  bringing 
all  these  forces  together  on  a  common  platform,  and 
in  our  own  day  we  see  the  revival  of  the  Catholic 
Church  in  its  embryo  stage. 

The  condition  of  the  people  is  appalling.  A  Prime 
Minister  has  told  us  of  twelve  million  people  on  the 
verge  of  starvation.  We  still  send  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  children  to  school  in  an  underfed 
condition.  Sweating  still  flourishes  in  our  towns,  and 
is  little  altered  for  the  better  since  the  time  in  which 
Kingsley  wrote  his  Alton  Locke.  The  half-time 
system  for  children  still  flourishes  in  the  North,  and 
in  the  South  of  England  child-labour  is  also  excessive, 
sometimes  amounting  to  sixty  hours  a  week.  Our 
industrial  system  still  results  in  the  overwork  and 
underfeeding  of  the  many,  and  the  underwork  and 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  281 

overfeeding  of  the  few.  Adulteration  in  trade  is 
everywhere  prevalent,  hours  of  adult  labour  are 
generally  excessive,  overcrowding  is  too  common, 
and  a  large  class  of  people  seem  to  have  learnt 
untruly,  by  means  of  rent  and  interest,  to  get  some- 
body else's  living  in  that  rut  of  death  in  which  it 
has  pleased  the  devil  to  leave  them. 

Yet  for  all  this  there  has  been  change,  not  only  in 
thought  but  in  conditions.  Evil  as  are  the  conditions 
of  the  twentieth  century,  terribly  as  they  contrast 
with  the  conditions  of  the  fourteenth  or  even  the 
seventeenth,  there  is  some  slight  improvement  since 
what  we  have  called  the  low- water  mark  of  1800 
to  1830. 

It  is  significant  that  this  improvement  in  outward 
conditions  should  be  concurrent  with  the  embryo 
revival  of  the  Catholic  religion.  I  have  sketched  the 
part  that  bishops  and  clergy  of  the  National  Church 
have  played  in  this  revival,  and  have  traced  the 
various  lines — Romanist,  Anglican,  Nonconformist, 
Agnostic — that  are  converging  towards  this  Catholic 
religion. 

In  England  the  Church  is  fettered,  as  are  its  Non- 
conformist offshoots,  by  reliance  on  the  subscriptions 
of  the  capitalist.  Not  only  are  bishops  appointed  by 
capitalist  governments,  but  the  people  have  been 
robbed  of  their  rights  in  the  parishes,  and  the  private 
patron  appoints  to  the  most  important  cures.  On 
ecclesiastical  bodies,  Convocations  of  Canterbury  and 
of  York,  ruridecanal  meetings,  diocesan  committees, 
the  artisan  class  is  almost  wholly  unrepresented. 
For,  in  spite  of  all  we  have  said,  the  official  Church  is 


282      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

still  the  ally  of  the  rich  against  the  poor.  For  all 
this,  secular  socialists  are  turning  to  the  Church  of 
England  for  clear  and  forcible  pronouncement  on  the 
social  question,  and  perhaps  those  of  them  who  study 
this  book  will  find  in  it  some  answer  to  their  own  oft- 
repeated  question  :  "  Why  is  it  that  definite  Church- 
men make  better  socialists  than  members  of  other 
religious  bodies  ?  " 

The  Church  of  England  stands  at  the  parting  of 
the  ways;  her  own  peculiar  position  should  help  her  to- 
wards socialism.  The  socialist  is  anti-imperialist  and 
anti  competitive  in  the  economic  sphere.  Is  not  that 
precisely  the  attitude  of  the  English  Church  in  the 
religious  sphere?  She  criticises  and  repudiates  the 
imperialism  of  Rome  and  the  competitive  theories  of 
Dissent.  Her  ideal  is  one  of  national  Churches,  but 
these  national  Churches  are  not  to  be  insular  and 
self-sufficient;  they  are  but  democratically  governed 
provinces  of  the  International  or  Catholic  Church  of 
God.  She  herself  appealed  for  an  international 
council  in  the  troubled  days  of  the  Reformation. 
For  such  an  international  council  she  still  longs.  Is 
it  inconceivable  that  the  Church  of  England  should 
learn  to  be  more  flexible  in  things  non-essential, 
more  firm  in  Catholic  fundamentals  ?  There  are  not 
wanting  indications  that  she  will  allow  a  little  more 
liberty  of  prophesying  to  her  nonconforming  sons  and 
daughters,  and  might  be  persuaded  to  provide  along- 
side of  her  liturgies  for  extempore  prayer  and  other 
types  of  service  dear  to  the  nonconformist  mind.  Is 
it  outside  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  the  service  of 
the  Eucharist,  symbol  and  bond  of  fellowship,  should 


BEFORE   THE  DAWN  283 

once  more  become  the  common  service  of  the  parish, 
and  that  all  Christians  uniting  in  that  common 
worship  should  be  allowed  considerable  liberty  in  the 
matter  of  other  services  and  addresses?  What  is 
most  urgently  needed  is  a  reinterpretation  of  the 
creeds  and  their  application  to  the  practical  life  of 
men,  the  democratisation  of  the  Church,  an  effective 
desire  to  meet  both  Nonconformists,  Atheists,  and 
Agnostics,  listen  to  their  criticisms,  and,  with  their 
help,  rebuild  the  national  religion,  without  sacrificing 
a  single  essential  principle.  At  the  same  time, 
forgetting  our  insularity,  we  must  hold  out  the  right 
hand  of  fellowship  to  those  comrades  in  the  Eastern 
and  Roman  communions  who  love  Catholicism  more 
than  they  love  Pope  or  Czar.  All  this  we  must 
do,  after  unreserved  acknowledgment  of  our  own 
national  crimes  and  blunders,  cloaking  nothing,  con- 
fessing everything.  To  have  the  strength  and  the 
flexibility  of  tempered  steel — that  is  the  task  of  the 
Church  of  England,  in  both  the  spiritual  and  the 
material  realm.  To  recover  and  to  develop  the 
Catholic  faith  in  every  sphere — physical,  mental,  and 
spiritual, — that  is  the  work  that  lies  ready  to  our 
hands. 

There  is  one  body  within  the  National  Church 
which  has  not  yet  been  mentioned.  The  Church 
Socialist  League  is  the  most  vigorous  champion  of 
Catholic  democracy  that  has  yet  taken  the  field.  Its 
power  is  already  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  numbers; 
its  growth  has  been  phenomenal  ;  its  activities  are 
numberless.  It  alone  has  the  unreserved  confidence 
of  the  secular  movement.  A  colossal  work  lies  before 


284      SOCIALISM  IN  CHURCH  HISTORY 

it.  If  the  League  has  the  energy  and  the  wisdom,  it 
may  act  like  leaven  upon  the  sluggish  conscience  of 
the  age.  It  may  be  that  God  is  raising  up  its 
members  for  the  revival  of  the  national  religion  and 
for  the  hope  of  an  international  Catholicism.  The 
Church  Socialist  League  may  prove  itself  one  of  God's 
chiefest  instruments  for  translating  "  Christianity " 
into  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  kingdoms  of 
this  world  into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  For  we  are 
witnessing  in  our  own  times  the  fulfilment  of  an  ancient 
prophecy  :  "  And  it  shall  be  in  the  last  days,  saith  God, 
I  will  pour  forth  my  spirit  upon  all  flesh  :  and  your  sons 
and  your  daughters  shall  prophesy,  and  your  young 
men  shall  see  visions,  and  your  old  men  shall  dream 
dreams  :  yea,  and  on  my  bondmen  and  bondmaidens 
in  those  days  will  I  pour  forth  of  my  spirit ;  and  they 
shall  prophesy.  And  I  will  show  wonders  in  the 
heaven  above  and  signs  on  the  earth  beneath ;  blood, 
and  fire,  and  vapour  of  smoke  :  the  sun  shall  be  turned 
into  darkness,  and  the  moon  into  blood,  before  the 
day  of  the  Lord  come,  that  great  and  notable  day : 
and  it  shall  be  that  whosoever  shall  call  on  the  name 
of  the  Lord  shall  be  saved." 


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